CLASSIFICATION. 
239 
Indian species, which alone the student is likely to find. We enumerate 
the diagnostic characters of the families known in India, with the reser¬ 
vation that these diagnostic characters are not as sharply marked as in 
other orders and that, outside the larger families, the logical use of these 
characters in referring an obscure beetle to its family may lead the 
student astray; if a beetle is shown to belong to a small obscure family, the 
specimen should be compared with specimens or good figures of others of 
that family to verify the determination. In Coleoptera more than in all 
orders, it is very difficult to place specimens that evidently do not belong 
to the larger families, owing to our ignorance of the Indian representa¬ 
tives of the smaller families. 
In no order is the mere rudimentary sorting out of species into 
groups rendered so difficult as in this, not merely because of the com¬ 
plexity of the order, but because of the want of agreement among those 
who study this order. Had the general body of Entomologists any 
“business sense,” a working scheme of classification to last, say for 50 
years, would have been evolved and then the necessary and radical changes 
caused by further knowledge made at once; as it is, two authors disagree 
in a striking manner; they adopt fresh groupings arbitrarily and the 
student is from the commencement bewildered with conflicting terms. 
For our purpose, a knowledge of the main lines to be adopted in the 
Fauna would have sufficed, but failing this, we have adhered to the classi¬ 
fication given in Sharp’s Insects, the standard in our work for the past, 
with a modification from Ganglbauer’s views as presenting no radical 
changes and as possibly anticipating future views. The earlier authors 
based the main divisions upon the antennal and tarsal characters 
and it is only lately that authors have gone deeper into the matter 
and used both the wing venation and internal characters. This is, from 
the systematises point of view, an advance, and those who wish to study 
the relationships of beetles, will do well to consult the paper by Gangl- 
bauer (Munchener Koleopterologische Zeitung, Yol. I); unfortunately 
such characters are useless in every-day work of classifying and arrang¬ 
ing specimens and we have been compelled to disregard this aspect in the 
endeavour to give characters which can actually be used in sorting out 
ordinary collections. The result is, that while nine-tenths of a collector’s 
captures will be readily sorted and placed, there will always remain a 
