Scudder. J 
380 
[Jan. 20, 
United States, although in that study a far more meager repre- 
sentation of the Gosiute fauna was at hand. 
We may pass to the consideration of some of the different 
families of Rhynchophora. 
The Rhynchitidae have already been referred to as the most in- 
teresting of all. 
The Otiorhynchidae are well represented in the American 
Tertiaries, the numerical preponderance of the species having 
then been much more than double what it is now. But the most 
striking fact is its importance for the Gosiute fauna, where fifteen 
genera and thirty-two species occur against ten genera and four- 
teen species at Florissant. Excepting in the Scolytidae which 
have but four species in the western Tertiaries and are thus rela- 
tively insignificant, no other family shows a preponderance of forms 
in the Gosiute fauna, and as it is here very marked, vve may fairly 
regard the Otiorhynchidae as thoroughly characteristic of this 
fauna. It is a further curious fact that the Florissant Otio- 
rhynchidae are mostly made up of members of different tribes 
from the others, the Evotini and Promecopini belonging exclu- 
sively or almost exclusively to the Lacustrine fauna, while the 
Tanymecini, Cyphini, and Phyllobiini are exclusively, the more 
numerous Ophryastini and Otiorhynchini almost exclusively, 
Gosiute ; the Brachyderini alone are divided equally between 
both. No other family of Rhynchophora shows in so strik- 
ing a manner a division of tribes between the two principal 
horizons of the western Tertiary insect-beds, and it is therefore 
probable that the fossils of this family may in the future furnish 
the best indications (as far as Rhynchophora are concerned) of 
the horizon of future insect localities in the West. 
In Europe, the number of genera and species is far less than in 
America, and the tribes Ophryastini, Evotini, and Promecopini, 
having in America fully two fifths the genera and nearly half the 
species, do not appear to occur at all, nor do any tribes occur in 
Europe which are not found in America, excepting the extinct 
tribe Pristorhynchini which is represented by a single species ; 
Even in the tribes that are the same, the genera are mostly differ- 
ent ; thus the Brachyderini are represented by Liparus, Aniso- 
rhynchus, and Brachyderes, five species in all; the Otiorhynchini 
by Qtiorhynchus and Laparocerus, a half dozen species, all 
Pleistocene ; the Tanymecini by Thylacites, a single species ; the 
