jan. — mar. 1857.] Descriptions of new Ceylon Cokojptera. 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 description of the Belgian author, it was 

 not likely that I should have looked for wings at all in the 

 ScYDMiEtaDjE (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 opening 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 of Cocoanut trees, Cinnamon gar- 

 dens, Paddy fields and patches of jungle. Here I collected large 

 numbers of Pselaphid^e, 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 Scydmjeni, especially my S. advolans and 

 pubescens, a family pronounced by the most recent authority to be 

 unable to fly, in a position which they could not well have found 



