THE “ SKIPJACKS ” AND THEIR ALLIES. 
167 
hinder angles of the thorax produced ; and the pro- 
jection of the prosternum more or less received into 
a cavity of the mesosternum, which admits of free 
motion. 
The most important addition to the British beetles 
that has been made for a long period is that of the 
type species of this family, Eucnemis capucina, which 
was taken in an old beech-tree near Brockenhurst, 
New Forest, in some numbers, by Dr. Sharp, Mr. 
Champion, and Mr. Gorham, on June 13th, 1886 : it is 
an elongate-oval, subcylindrical, shining-black insect, 
from two to three lines in length, and is clothed with 
silky greyish pubescence ; the legs are strongly re- 
tractile, and render the insect extremely difficult to 
mount ; tho larva is fully described by Dr. Sharp in 
the Transactions of the Entomological Society, 1886 
(Part iii., pp. 297 — 302). 
Melasis and Microrrhagus, our other undoubted 
species in this family, are of considerable rarity. The 
latter, a small black elongate insect, with long antennae, 
which are strongly flabellated in the male, and re- 
ceived in repose into slight furrows on the sides, is 
occasionally taken in the New Forest ; and the former, 
which is larger, more cylindrical and robust (Plate 
VIII., Fig. 6; Melasis buprestoides, male), occurs 
sometimes close to London, on palings, and in old 
trees. The males have flabellated antennaj, and are 
usually smaller than tho females ; and the larva closely 
resemblos those of the Buprestidx, from which it 
chiefly differs in the structure of the organs of its 
mouth, and in not having its head divided into two 
portions: it eats galleries in receutly dead wood, and 
forms a cell in which to undergo its metamorphosis ; 
