152 LAMELLICOEKIA. 



PSEUDOSERICA. 



Pseudoserica, Guerin, Voy. de la Coquille, Ent. p. 86 (1830). 



Plectris, Serv. (partim), Blanchard, Cat. Coll. Ent. i. p. 125 (1850) ; Lacordaire, Gen. Col. iii. 



p. 260 (1856). 

 Philochloenia (partim), Burmeister, Handb. der Ent. iv. 2, p. 28 (1855) (nee Philochlania , Blanch. 



1850). 



Among the numerous cases of involved and almost inextricable synonymy created by 

 the independent publication of Burmeister's monograph of the Melolonthidse, that 

 resulting from the opposite view taken by him and Blanchard of the genus Philochlasnia 

 is perhaps the worst. Burmeister had been many years working at his monograph of 

 this family, and Blanchard's descriptive catalogue having in the meantime appeared, 

 he found the task of reconciling his work with that of his predecessor hopeless, 

 and brought it out with a few synonymical notes only in the Appendix. Lacordaire's 

 ' Lamellicornes' volume appeared too soon after Burmeister's publication for the 

 revision which that patient and keen-sighted entomologist would otherwise, no doubt, 

 have undertaken. Philochlcenia^ up to Blanchard's time, was a catalogue-name only, 

 and although it then included more than one distinct generic type urgently in need of 

 denning, this author unfortunately chose, as its first or typical section, species which 

 make it virtually a synonym of the much older genus Plectris. A generic name 

 which it would have been useful to retain thus falls through, unless the extreme 

 inequality and separate movability of the tarsal claws of the first section should 

 hereafter render it desirable to retain Philochloenia as a genus distinct from Plectris. 

 Burmeister's genus Philochloenia, on the other hand, consists chiefly of species wrongly 

 included in Plectris by Blanchard. The majority of these seem to me to form a 

 natural genus allied to Plectris in facies and in the relative length of the basal 

 joint of the hind tarsi; but differing in the claws being all equal and more or less 

 divaricated, and in the elytra having a distinct membranous border, the border being 

 at most a fine hair-fringe in Plectris. They all have a sinuated clypeus, and the 

 labrum so deeply sinuated as to be bilobed — characters which all Burmeister's Philo- 

 chlcenice do not possess, for his P. chalcea (=Alvarinus submetallicus, Blanch.), and 

 possibly most of his Section I., have a rounded clypeus and small arcuate-emarginate 

 labrum. The posterior tibia? have two apical spurs in both sexes. This group is con- 

 generic with the Pseudoserica marmorea of Guerin, and it will be in accordance with 

 the rules of priority, therefore, to resuscitate Guerin's name in re-establishing the 

 genus on a broader basis. 



I have seen about a score species belonging to Pseudoserica, very few of which 

 answer the description of the twenty or thirty described by Blanchard and Burmeister. 

 They are peculiar to Tropical America. 



