fi36 STATES OF INSFXTS. 



of stiffish hair; in the female all are equally slender, and 

 not so hairy. In Carabus, Feronia, &c. Latr. the four first 

 joints of these tarsi in the males are dilated, and furnished 

 with a brush or cushion : in the Silp/iidce, also, the same 

 circumstance takes place. In Harpalus Latr., and Sil- 

 pha americana, the four anterior ones are similarly formed 

 in this respect. But one of the most remarkable sexual 

 characters, in this tribe of insects, that distinguish the 

 males, are those orbicular patella?, furnished below with 

 suckers of various sizes, and formed by the three first 

 joints of the tarsus, which are to be met with in the Dy- 

 tiscidtf, &c. ; but as I shall have occasion to treat of these 

 more fully in another Letter, I shall only allude to them 

 now. The second pair of tarsi have in these also the 

 three first joints dilated and cushioned a . In Hydro- 

 philus piceus, another water-beetle, the fifth joint of the 

 tarsus is dilated externally, so as to form nearly an equi- 

 lateral triangle b . Christian, a German writer on the Hy- 

 menoptera, has described some very singular appendages 

 which he observed on the first joint of the four posterior 

 tarsi of Xylocopa latipes F. These were battledore- 

 shaped membranaceous laminae, with a reticulated sur- 

 face, of a pale colour ; which were fixed in pairs by the 

 intervention of a footstalk to the above joint, on which 

 they sometimes amounted to more than a hundred : the 

 use of which, he conjectures, is the collection of pollen c . 

 I possess two specimens of this bee ; one has none of 

 these appendages, and on the other I can discover them 

 only in one of the tarsi — from which circumstance I am 



a Plate XV. Fig. 9. b Ibid§ FlGt 8# 



e Christ. Hymenopt. 118. t. iv./. 3. 



