COLEOPTEROUS FAMILY PAUSSID^E. 
3 
night, falling upon the table from the ceiling, on the introduction 
of lights upon the table. They are slow and steady in their move¬ 
ments, and evidently of great rarity. I have received statements 
of similar habits exhibited by several other Indian and Javanese 
species ; and Mr. Westermann states that the eight species of 
the family captured by him, wex’e all taken accidentally in houses 
by night, flying about wood, whence he conceives them to be noc¬ 
turnal and xylophagous. (Silbermann, Rev. Ent. No. 3.) A 
species of Paussus was received by M. Dupont from Senegal, with 
the statement that it had been observed to crepitate like the 
Bombardier beetles ; and M. Payen informed M. Lacordaire that 
the species which he had detected in the Moluccas and isles of 
Sunda, possess the same power. (Lacord. Introd. ii., p. 57.) 
M. Verreaux at the Cape of Good Hope, and Mr. George 
MacLeay in New Holland, have detected species of Paussidse in 
ants'' nests: the latter having also observed that the species of 
Cerapterus captured by him crepitates. A new species of this 
genus has recently been received by Mr. Hope from Port Philip, 
with the observation that it had been found under dried cow-dung 
as well as under the loose bark of trees. 
Afzelius also states that in looking at one of his specimens of 
Paussus sphmrocerus (remarkable for the globular, glossy, and 
pale-coloured club of its antennse) in the evening, and happening 
to stand between the light and the box in which it was enclosed, 
so that his shadow fell upon the insect, he observed, to his great 
astonishment, the globes of the antennse, like two lanthorns, 
spreading a dim phosphoric light. Pie adds, however, that he was 
“ prevented from ascertaining the fact by reiterated experiments,*' 
as his specimen died. May not the reflected light falling upon the 
semipellucid livid-coloured balls of the antennse give them the 
described appearance ? Or, may it not be accounted for precisely 
in the same manner as the light emitted by the shining moss men¬ 
tioned in Loudon’s “Magazine of Natural History, (No. xv. 
p. 463,) by the late Mr. Bowman ? 
In their geographical distribution the insects of this family, 
hitherto known, are natives of the old world, if we except the 
species represented in plate 50, f. 2, which Mr. Miers has brought 
from Brazil. The others are from tropical and southern Africa, 
India, the islands of the Indian Ocean, and New South Wales; 
and one from the Balkan Mountains in Turkey. 
The relations of these insects with other Coleopterous families 
