178 Memoirs of the Indian Museum. [Vol'. Ill, 



tinctive than that system at first sight suggests. I have accordingly given a 

 revised classification with keys to all the genera known from this area, except Tar- 

 quinius, Kuwert. This genus is as yet only known from one imperfectl3^ described 

 specimen from New Guinea which I have not seen/ and it does not appear to be closely 

 related to any of the genera found in the Oriental Region.'^ If it should prove that 

 I have attempted more than I can successfully carry out in the limited state of 

 my personal knowledge of the family as a whole, I can only say that the attempt 

 appeared to me to be worth making, and that the descriptions and figures of the 

 species I have seen (which will lose none of their value thereby) will, I believe, 

 prove sufficient to prevent my work from adding in any wa}^ to the confusion which 

 it is intended in some measure to clear up. References to genera or species that 

 are not known to occur in the Oriental Region (by which is meant here India, 

 Formosa, the Philippines, Borneo, and intermediate localities) or in China or Japan 

 are enclosed in square brackets, both in the keys and in the account of the 

 zoogeography of the Oriental genera of Passalidae. 



Although the Indian Museum collection of Asiatic Passalidae, as I found it, was 

 in many ways a remarkably fine one, additional collections that have been sent to 

 me for examination have enabled me to make this paper much fuller than would 

 otherwise have been possible. How far this is so will be sufficiently evident from the 

 notes included in the catalogue of our specimens. I am greatly indebted to 

 Mr. T. Bainbrigge Fletcher and Captain R. B. Seymour Se well, who have collected 

 valuable series of vSouth Indian species for me; to Mr. S. W. Kemp, who, with the 

 assistance of Captain the Hon. M. de Courcy and the 32nd Sikh Pioneers, made 

 an equally important collection in the Abor country; and to Mr. E. E. Green, 

 Mr. H. E. Andrewes, Mr. H. Stevens, the Sarawak Museum, the Colombo Museum, 

 the Bombay Natural History Society and the Imperial Agricultural and Forest 

 Research Institutes, for the loan of their collections. It must not be supposed that 

 these collections include only the species definitely attributed to them in this paper, 

 in which, as it is primarily a part of the ''Annotated Eist of the Asiatic Beetles in 

 the Collection of the Indian Museum", I have not thought it necessary to refer to 

 other collections when there seemed to be no special reason for doing so.^ 



' Also, I have since learnt, from two specimens in the Deiitsches Entomologisches Museum, 

 recorded by Zang from New Guinea without any description (19066, p. 23). These show that Kuwert's 

 figure of this species is less trustworthy than his description. In general appearance they closely 

 resemble species of the genus Leptaulax, from which they differ chiefly in the absence of scars from 

 the mentum and in the presence of six well- developed lamellae on each antenna. See also Appendix 

 III, pp. 326-330 below, 



■^ The locality of Semicydus redtenhacheri, Stoliczka (1H73) is probably not Ceylon but Brazil (see 

 Kuwert, 1898, pp. 203 and 279) ; while that of Paxilloides schmidtii and philippinensis, Kuwert (Deutsphe 

 Ent. Zeitschr., 1890) is probably also Brazil, not the Philippine Islands (see Kuweit, 1891, p. 182 and 

 1898, p, 181). Consequently the genera Semicydus and Paxilloides are not regarded here as belonging to 

 the Oriental Region. Nor have I accepted the record of Mastochilus polifiis from Madras (see Stohczka, 

 1873, p. 156). 



•' Since this paper was sent to press I have had access to the collections in Hamburg, Berlin, and 



