Insects. 5637 



*1 dubia, Er., Kz., Ste. 7 infuscata, Kz. 



conuroides, Matth., Stcph. Gymnusa, Karsten, Er. 



2 intermedia, Er. I brevicollis, Payk., Er. 

 attenuala, Matth., Ste. *2 variegata, Kieseinv., Kz. 



3 minuta, Er., Matth., Ste. Man. 2932 Dinopsis, Matth., Steph., Kz. 



and 2936 Gymnusa, (pars), Er. 



4 gracilis, Matth., Ste. 1 erosus, (KirLy), Steph. 

 fortieornis, Kz. fuscatus (*' furcatus" in MS.), Matth. 



5 elongata, Matth., Kz. Ste., Kz. 



6 brevicornis, Matth., Ste. laticollis, Er. 

 gracilis, Ileer., Hardy $• Bold, Kz. 



G. R. Waterhouse. 



Note on the Dromius glabratus of British Cabinets. — My attention Las been lately 

 called by Dr. H. Schaum, of Berlin, to the fact that there are two well-defined 

 Dromii confounded under the specific title of glabratus, — not merely in England, but 

 throughout Europe generally. True it is that they were originally recognised as 

 distinct both by Megerle and Sturm, the latter of whom gave very excellent figures of 

 them in the second volume of the ' Deutschlands Fauna,' in 1812, which it is sur- 

 prising should have been afterwards so universally ignored. Never having myself 

 critically investigated the British Dromii, and having, moreover, only taken the 

 smaller one of the two species in question, I had never had reason to suspect that 

 there might perhaps exist in this country a near ally to what we had always been 

 accustomed to regard as the (minute) D. glabratus ; and it was therefore with the 

 greater pleasure that I received Dr. Schaum's communication, because it undesignedly 

 confirmed my own independent views long ago arrived at in Madeira, where the two 

 species under consideration also occur, and where it had never once entered into my 

 mind (whilst overhauling them most carefully) to cite them as identical. During four 

 successive visits, indeed, to those islands I have taken them abundantly, and they have 

 been before me now, at intervals, for upwards of ten years ; and yet I have never met 

 with a single example which left me in doubt as to which of the species it should be 

 referred to; and I confess I should not have hesitated to identify them with the 

 glabratus and maurus of Sturm had I not been aware that those two insects (so 

 admirably expressed in the figures above alluded to) were looked upon as coincident 

 by European Coleopterists, whereas my Madeiran ones I could not but regard as truly 

 distinct inter se. Assuming therefore that entomologists were not mistaken in their 

 hypothesis, I concluded (as a matter of necessity) that one of my Madeiran species 

 must be new ; and since the smaller of the two was clearly identical with what we have 

 always acknowledged (though wrongly) as the glabratus, I retained it as such, and 

 called the larger one " negrita." Dr. Scbaura, however, having lately informed me 

 that he had observed exactly the same characters in Continental specimens as I had 

 pointed out in my ' Insecta Madeirensia,' he suggested that the two Madeiran species 

 were probably the same as those figured by Sturm, and as those (confounded under the 

 name of glabratus) which he had been recently examining in Germany; and, with the 

 view of inquiring into this still further, he requested me to inspect carefully the 



