CRYPTOPHAGIDJE. DERMESTIDiE. 1 1.3 



DESCRIPTION. 



In shape, sculpture, and pubescence this species resembles the preceding, but it is smaller, and 

 the whole insect is entirely of one colour — dark ferruginous. 



N. B. The two species last described differ from the other Cryptophagi in having the thorax 

 without serratures or denticles, and the scutellum obtusangular, and may perhaps form a subgenus. 



It should seem to result from a comparison of Necrobia with Cryptophagus that 

 there is an affinity between them ; the former, as restricted by Mr. Stephens, 1 is a 

 necrophagous genus : N. Quadra, of which I was the first discoverer and sent to 

 the late Mr. Marsham with that Trivial name, I found upon the bones of dead 

 animals very busily engaged in devouring what remained upon them. If this idea 

 prove correct, it will furnish another instance of a collateral departure from the 

 main stem of the system in a different direction from that to which its more evident 

 affinities conduct us. 



Family DERMESTID^. Dermestidans. 



LXI. Genus ATT A GENUS. Lat. 



(161) 1. Attagenus cylindricus. Cylindrical Attagenus. 



A. ' ctjhndricus) nitjro-piceus, subcylindricus, cinereo-subpubescens ; antennis medio tarsisque rufis. 



Cylindrical attagenus, subcylindrical, dark-piceous with cinereous down : antennae, in the middle, and tarsi, rufous. 



PLATE VII, FIG, 3. 



Length of the body 2 lines. 



Two specimens taken in the Rocky Mountains. 



DESCRIPTION. 



This little species has much the air of a Cryptophagus, but belongs to the present genus. The 

 body is subcylindrical, dark-piceous, very minutely punctured, and covered, but not thickly, with 

 decumbent cinereous hairs. The two first joints of the antenna? are large, globular, and of the 

 same colour with the rest of the body; the intermediate ones very minute and pale rufous; the three 

 last are incrassated and form an oblong piceous knob, of which the terminal joint is as long as the 

 two preceding ones, ovate and acute : the prothorax behind is very obsoletely trilobed with the in- 

 termediate lobe rounded: the tarsi are rufous. 



1 Si/stemat. Catal. 138. Genus 238. 



