JAN. — MAR. 1857.] Descriptions of new Ceylon Coleoptera. 189 
a slip of the pen or a misprint in the g. des Coleopteres quoted 
above, is clear from the obvious care which has been bestowed 
upon every part of that work, and from the same remarks being re- 
peated in different words. To attempt to discover how this mis- 
take occurred, and upon what grounds it rests — would under my 
circumstances be useless. However, it appears certain to me that 
some more detailed and positive remarks on the subject cannot be 
superfluous, and must be new to some Entomologists. Placing 
the fullest confidence, as every one naturally would do in the 
infallibility of the descriptifin of the Belgian author, it was 
not likely that I should* have looked for wings at all in the 
ScYDMiENiDiE (a family^ to which I have not until lately paid 
much attention) had I not been struck by seeing the elytra of 
my S, alatus open, when handling it with a fine paint brush 
in a drop of water, it being at the time quite out of the question 
that the opening could have been effected by pressure. On open- 
ing the elytra fully I had no difficulty in discovering the wings. 
Rendered extremely curious by this discovery — diametrically op- 
posed as it was to the distinct statement of so great an authority, 
I now examined other species, and all with the same result, most 
of them opeaing the elytra without my assistance in the same man- 
ner as the S. alatus, and I have not the slightest doubt that when 
a sufficient number of specimens shall enable me to examine the 
rest it will still be with the same result. That these insects use 
their organs of flight may be gathered from the following fact ; At 
a former period I lived in a house situated on a small eminence 
and overlooking extensive groves ofCocoanut trees. Cinnamon gar- 
dens, Paddy fields and patches of jungle. Here I collected large 
numbers of Pselaphid^, especially Euplectus, in thin, scarcely 
visible spider webs with which the white walls of the house were 
covered in certain places — thus forming one large trap for anything 
small flying about. That these had been caught when on the wing 
there could be no doubt, but I was much surprised to find with 
them (what is so common in more congenial localities, here also) a 
considerable number of Scydm^ni, especially my S. advolans and 
puhescens^ a family pronounced by the most recent authority to be 
unable to fly, in a position which they could not well have found 
