232 
BRITISH BEETLES. 
readily tucking up its legs and falling to the ground 
on the approach of the collector. 
The species of Abdera, — small, cylindrical, and 
handed with pale testaceous, — have the penultimate 
joint of the tarsi truncate, and very small spurs to the 
tibiae ; they are found in dead boughs of trees, and 
in the short half-rotten stumps left on trees where 
boughs have been broken off. Hy puli is quercinus, 
a narrow, elegantly spotted and banded insect, with 
robust antennae, occurs in old wood in some numbers 
when found, for it is very local ; and the fragile Cono- 
palpus may be taken under the same conditions as 
Abdera, though it has been also found in flowers, where 
it might readily bo passed over for a pallid Telephorus 
by the incipient Coleopterist. In this genus the 
antennae have only ten joints, and the apical joint of 
the maxillary palpi is very narrow and elongate. 
Osphya bipunctata, exceedingly local, being only 
found in flowers, &c., at Monk’s Wood, has very much 
the general appearance of a Telephorus, but with the 
hinder femora in the male much inflated and arched, 
as in OEdcmera ; the two sexes, also, differ consider- 
ably in size and colour ; the male being usually the 
largest and black, and the female testaceous. As in 
many instances before noticed, these marked sexual 
disparities exhibit several modifications; undeveloped 
males occurring in which the inflation of the hinder 
femora disappears, the size is diminished, &c. 
In the Pyrochkoim: the head is exserted, horizontal 
or almost horizontal, and is strongly constricted a 
short distance behind the eyes, which are emarginate; 
the anterior coxal cavities are broadly open behind and 
confluent, and the prosternum is long before the ante- 
