COLEOPTERA. 



_ n the dissertation alluded to, the genus Paussus is exemplified by a single 

 botW mi ° r0Ce P halus > and Diopsis by D. ichneumonea, a plate with figures of 

 01 o which, drawn by J. Afzelius, and engraved by Berquist, accompany the 

 descriptions. It is to this plate, and the original descriptions of Linnaeus, that 

 * uessly is indebted solely for the account he gives of both these genera, in his Archiv. 

 der InsectengeschicMe, printed at Zurich in 1783, as well as in the French translation 

 of that work which afterwards appeared in Paris. Indeed, as Professor Afzelius has 

 suggested, from the repeated errors that appear in those works, in translating the 

 Linnaean observations, defining the character of the genus Paussus, &c, it is very 

 likely that neither Fuessly, nor his translators, Herbst, Gmelin, and some other 

 writers who have treated on it, ever saw an insect either of this genus, or of Diopsis. 



Thunberg, during his travels through the country of the Hottentots in 1772, 

 found two coleopterous insects, which he conceived, with much propriety, ought to 

 be referred to a new genus, none of those established previous to his departure from 

 Europe by Linnaeus being calculated to admit them. But on his return to Sweden, 

 he found that Linnaeus in his absence had described the genus Paussus, to which 

 they might be referred. An account of these was afterwards inserted in the Tran- 

 sactions of the Royal Academy of Stockholm for 1781 : this paper is accompanied 

 with a figure of only one of the insects mentioned, P. lineatus, a species very aptly 

 named, from the distinct longitudinal streak on each of the wing cases ; the other 

 insect described by Thunberg, he calls ruber. Fabricius consigned these, with the 

 Linnaean insect, to his genus Cerocoma. 



The latest history of the genus Paussus, previous to the first edition of this work, 

 was from the pen of Professor Afzelius, a learned, copious, and elaborate paper, in- 

 serted in the fourth volume of the Transactions of the Linnaean Society, in which he 

 describes Paussus microcephalus, and another species which he found in Africa, which 

 he names P. sphaerocerus. Neither of those insects are allied to the species figured 

 in this plate, which were entirely undescribed. For this important accession of new 

 species to a group so little known, Donovan was indebted to the active and praise- 

 worthy zeal of Mr. Fichtel, in compliment to whom one of them is named Fichtelii. 



Since the publication of the first edition of this work, various additional species 

 have been discovered, constituting a very natural family, distributed into several dis- 

 tinct genera, of which I have published a monograph in the sixteenth volume of the 

 Linnaean Transactions. I have also more recently become acquainted with several 

 other species, of which figures and descriptions have been laid before the Entomolo- 

 gical Society of London. 



