74 Proceedings of the 



Dr. Leconte of Philadelphia, Dr. Asa Fitch of Salem, and Mr. 

 Calverly of New York. To our British entomologists, Dr. 

 Power, Mr. J. T. Syme, Mr. Hislop, Rev. W. Little, Rev. Hamlet 

 Clark, Mr. Guyon, Mr. Bates, Dr. Lowe and others, I also owe 

 many thanks. They have entrusted to me the whole of their 

 species for as long a period as I chose to retain them, and the 

 whole of the gentlemen I have named have liberally placed their 

 duplicates at my disposal. I take this opportunity to tender to 

 each of them individually my best thanks for their kindness. 



With this acknowledgement of my obligations and expla- 

 nation of the sources of my information, I shall now in the first 

 place cast a rapid glance at what has been done by previous 

 authors, first in the European species and afterwards in the 

 exotic ; I shall then give detailed descriptions of all the different 

 species which have been described or have come under my notice 

 (among which will be found one or two new species), and lastly 

 conclude by giving a short dichotomous table of the "characters 

 of the European species of the genus. 



The species which compose this genus were scattered by 

 ancient authors among several other genera. DeGeer placed 

 one species under Dermestes, and Geoffrey another under Silpha* 

 Fourcroy placed the only one he knew under Peltis, Panzer 

 under Helops, Frohlich under Luperus, Fabricius under Cistela 

 and Hydrophilus, Marsham under Mordella, and Linnaeus (pos- 

 sibly) under Chrysomela. Latreille was the first who, in his 

 1 Precis des Caracteres Generiques des Insectes/ established the 

 genus under the name of Choleva. This was in 1802, and about 

 two years after it was also recognized first by Paykull, and after- 

 wards by Knoch, who each gave it another name — Knoch that 

 of Ptomaphagus which was adopted by Illiger, and Paykull that 

 of Catops which was adopted by Fabricius, and has been retained 

 by most subsequent authors. By the rule of priority therefore 

 the name should be Choleva, but I am glad that I have a suffi- 

 cient apology for not disturbing the almost universally adopted 

 name of Catops. Latreille himself appears at first only to have 

 applied his name to one section of the genus. This appears from 

 his ' Histoire Naturelle des Crustaces et des Insectes/ where in 

 speaking of his constituting the genus, he says, " Its appearance, 

 says Geoffroy, resembles that of the Mordella?, that is to say, it 

 has long legs with which it walks as if it limped. It is from 

 that character that I have taken my generic denomination : 

 Choleva in Greek means ' lame. ; " The long legs here referred to 

 apply to the first section of the genus, which was subsequently 

 erected into a separate genus by Stephens, and may, I think, be 

 properly maintained as a subgenus, to which Latreille' s name 

 may be restricted. 



