92 



LAMELLICORNIA. 



30. Aphodius villosipes. 



Aphodius villosipes, Harold, Eerl. ent. Zeitschr. 1862, p. 384 ^ 1863, p, 330. 

 Hab. Mexico \ Oaxaca (Salle). 



31. Aphodius luridiventris. 



Aphodius luridiventris, Harold, Berl. ent. Zeitschr. 1862, p. 385 l ; 1863, p. 330. 

 Hab. Mexico \ Cinco Senores, Yolos (Salle), Mexico city (Hoge). 



The Salle collection contains no examples of this or the preceding species labelled by 

 the describer ; but there is a series of each named by M. Salle, all of which seem to me to 

 belong to one and the same species. As none of the differential characters mentioned 

 by Von Harold hold good, I am inclined to think they are not distinct. All the specimens 

 have convex elytral interstices, and a more or less distinct tooth at the inner base of the 

 tarsal claws in all the legs. The punctuation of the upper surface varies indefinitely, 

 and the silky surface is more or less perceptible in all*. 



SAPROSITES. 



Saprosites, Kedtenbacher, Fauna Austriaca, Kafer, 2nd ed. p. 436 (1858). 



This genus was founded by its author on a minute Aphodiide found in orchid- 

 houses at Schonbrunn, and supposed to have been imported from America ; Von Harold 

 gives the locality as Colombia. Eedtenbacher omits to mention the characters distin- 

 guishing the genus from Euparia, and from the species belonging to the subsequently 

 proposed genus Atcenius : these, according to Von Harold (incidentally stated in his 

 diagnoses of various species), are the traces of transverse carina? on the outer side of 

 the four hind tibiae and the dentiform projections on their apical margin ; but there is 

 little doubt that the numerous species referred to Saprosites by Von Harold are really 

 congeneric with Kedtenbacher's type. I would, however, exclude such species as 

 Saprosites sulcatus, Harold, which have a simple fringe of bristles to the apical margin 

 of the four hinder tibiae. 



Upwards of twenty species of Saprosites have been recorded. The genus has a wide 

 range, including, according to Von Harold, besides Tropical America and Tropical Asia, 

 Japan, New Zealand, and some of the tropical islands of the Pacific. The flattened 

 species which I observed in the Amazons region were found under the close-fittino- bark 

 of trees, in company with similarly flattened Cossonidse and Cucujidae f . 



* The name Aphodius duplex given above (p. 87) has been previously applied by Leconte to a North-American 

 species of this genns ; I now propose to change the specific name to opisthius. 



f In further elucidation of tbe group of Saprosites, comprising tbe bark-living species, I append diagnoses of 

 the following curious forms : — 



Saprosites cancellatus. 



Sublinearis, depressus, castanco-rufus, glaber ; capite minus convexo, crebre punctulato, clypeo antice transversim 



