166 
LETTEES FEOM ALABAMA. 
generally more or less curved at the tips, but 
being immovable except as that division of the 
body which carries them is moved, it is difficult to 
conceive any mode in which they can be used. In 
some the frontal horn of the head may, by the 
motion of the head itself, be brought to meet one 
which projects from the centre of the thorax, as in 
a very large and fine species {Dynastes Tityrus)^ 
which is found, though rarely, with us. The spe- 
cimen which I have obtained is of a yellowish 
grey, with black irregular spots on the elytra, and 
is the largest beetle I have ever seen alive. I have 
no reason, however, to conclude that the horns are 
ever used in this way ; and in many of the species, 
in which, though largely developed, they occur 
only on the thorax, the points can never make the 
slightest approach to contact. Whatever other 
office they may hold, there can be no doubt that 
they are ‘marks of sexual distinction, being much 
less developed in the female than in the male, thus 
bearing no distant analogy to the true horns of 
many of the ruminant mammalia. 
These remarkable prominences are, I believe, 
wholly confined to the Lamellicorn tribe, which 
formed the vast genus 8carah(2us of Linnaeus. I 
have before me a fine example of thoracic develop- 
ment in a living specimen of Oryctes Maimon, It 
is larger than any English beetle, though, perhaps, 
not so long as some specimens of the Stag Beetle 
{Lucanus cervus)^ which it resembles in colour, 
being of a deep chestnut, highly polished. On the 
thorax are three horns, each about half-an-inch 
in height, one in front, and one on each side, all 
curving towards each other at the tips. The head 
bears none. I have seen individuals having these 
