REVIEWS. 
3 
merely a specific character. Of the general argument he disposes in these 
terms:—“ It is true that many of the Coleoptera are apterous, but the 
objection therefore taken originates in a very contracted point of view, and 
is immaterial. When any stirps—the Melanosomata , for example—is 
destitute of wings throughout, that very circumstance affords a character 
derived from the wings, namely, the want of them.* On the other hand, 
when individual genera, or even whole families, as the Scydmcenidce and 
Pselaphidce ,j* are wingless; the rest of their structure will sufficiently 
determine their natural affinity.” So that, in his opinion, no greater 
difficulty should result therefrom than in the other orders, in which the 
venation, admitted as an important character in general, does not, however, 
leave us at a loss where to place the apterous forms, of which there are 
examples enow in those orders also. The practical difficulty lies rather in 
the comparative indistinctness of the veins in the Coleoptera, and in this, 
that they are not connected in one complete system, but normally inter¬ 
rupted in a tract corresponding to the primary fold*' of the wing.J Bur- 
meister, contemplating a more extended treatment of the subject in parts 
to follow, has devoted this one mainly to the great and multiform group 
Clavicornia of Latreille. The views he has promulgated claim a careful 
consideration, whether we regard the weight of the writer’s authority, the 
additional element here introduced for the solution of the problem, or the 
results as they affect certain erratic forms and much-vexed questions of 
affinity. We have, therefore, judged it not out of place to give a summary 
of the arrangement that Burmeister has proposed. But to explain his 
method, and to prevent misconception, it seems well to premise the author’s 
concluding aphorism—that the wings, by themselves, cannot establish any 
stirps; but the groups thus indicated are only then to be admitted as 
natural, when other characters coincide with this one. Accordingly, the 
form of larva, the special composition of the thorax and abdomen, the oral 
organs, and the tarsi, all have been consulted as carefully as the wings; but 
* The simplified venation of the minuter forms is hardly a more specious objec¬ 
tion. Restricted to individual species, the statement scarcely holds good ; and if it 
did, would not amount to a serious difficulty. No more can it constitute such in 
respect to groups and families wholly consisting of such minute forms, since here 
absolute magnitude and simpler venation may be considered as at once character¬ 
istic and correlative. 
f In this instance we can only recognise an oversight, or hasty induction. Most 
collectors probably know that it is nothing uncommon to take Euplecti on the 
wing. 
t This incomplete continuity and imperfect tubular structure of the veins in the 
Coleoptera may account for the slighter cohesion between the contiguous mem¬ 
branes of the wing. We have often observed the wings of small beetles, preserved 
in a fluid medium, reduced, by absorption or imbibition of the fluid, to their gene- 
tical condition of a membranous sac. 
