INSECTA. 
337 
legions, and these into five tribes, and under these tribes we 
find a descending series of sections, subtribes, groups, subgroups, 
divisions, and sometimes subdivisions, with occasionally cohort 
introduced between the subtribe and the group; and as each of 
these groups is furnished with a name terminating in -it(je, a most 
perplexing labyrinth of nomenclature is produced. Not content 
with increasing the difficulties of the student by using the same 
termination for groups of all degrees of in)portance, M. Thom- 
son actually employs the same denomination for three or four 
groups of successively diminishing value. Thus we find the 
typical lower section of a group distinguished by the name 
of the higher group, with tlie addition of the adjective veree', 
and in this way we get no less than four groups, all of which, 
according to M. Thomson, are the true Lamitse, Ceram- 
bycitse, or Prionitse respectively. It is needless to point out 
the inconveniences attending such a loose method of nomen- 
clature; one would have thought that thej^ were sufficiently 
evident to have restrained the author from adopting it. This 
work is not quite completed in the numbers published in 1864, 
the tabular synopsis of the inferior groups and genera being 
unfinished. 
The groups referred to by M. Thomson as families limi- 
trophes'^ of the Cerambycidse include the genera Thaumasus, 
Erichsonia, and Parandra (which are usually regarded as aber- 
rant members of i\m Prionides) , and Trictenotoma, Anoploderma, 
Hypocephalus , and their allies, the true affinities of which are 
more doubtful. Each of these genera, according to M. Thom- 
son, forms the type of a small distinct family. 
Wollaston, T. Y. A Catalogue of the Coleopterous Insects 
from the Canaries in the Collection of the British Mu- 
seum. 1864, 8vo, pp. 648. (Published by order of the 
Trustees.) 
Mr. Wollaston has followed up his thorough investigation of 
the Coleoptera of the Madeiran group of islands with an equally 
exhaustive search after insects of the same order in the Cana- 
ries; and the result of his investigations has been the deposition of 
a nearly complete collection of Canarian Beetles in the Insect- 
room of the British Museum, and the publication of the cata- 
logue of which the title is given above. Although not so mag- 
nificent a work as his fine volume on the Coleoptera of Madeira, 
it displays the same pains-taking desire for the accurate de- 
termination of the species, and the same care in description and 
in the bringing together of the synonymy, which is charac- 
teristic of all Mr. Wollaston^s work. In this respect, as indeed 
in all others, Mr. Wollaston^s Catalogue presents a striking con- 
trast to the far more pretentious treatise on the Canarian Cole- 
optera, prepared by M. Brulle for the Hist. Nat. des lies Cana- 
1864. [voL. I.] z 
