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Show 1904.] OF THE GENUS HIPPORRHINUS. 7 hours which I spent there. During a stay in Oxford, my kind friend Prof. Poulton gave me the freest access to the valuable collections in the Hope Department, which resulted in the discovery of a number of the missing Schonherrian types of Curcu-lionida?, including one Hipporrhinus, the rare //. capicola Gyl. The present paper, however, was only rendered possible by my visit to Stockholm, where, through the kindness of Profs. Auri-villius and Sjostedt, 1 was able thoroughly to study the original collections of Schonherr and Chevrolat, as well as all Fahraeus' types in the general Museum collection. I have personally examined examples of all the species described in this paper, with the exception of four only; although it is cp-iite possible that in the case of some of Gyllenhal's species, the types of which have been lost, m y identification from the description only may eventually prove to be incorrect. The four species referred to are carinirostris Gyl., sublineatus Gyl., coronatus Fst., and quadrispinosus F. Possibly the last species does not belong to the genus at all, for Fabricius' description is useless f< >r the purpose of identification. Wherever it has been possible- and this was fortunately so in the great majority of cases-the type specimens have been examined; but unfortunately in the case of the collections made by Ecklon & Zeyher and by Drege, Schonherr appears to have returned a number of his types to the collectors. The whereabouts of these types I have so far failed to trace. Mr. Peringuey kindly lent me for examination a printed price-list, issued by Ecklon & Zeyher, of all their South African insects, from whicb I inferred that their collection was distributed piecemeal in many directions. Mr. Peringuey further says that when he fix-st came to the South African Museum that Institution possessed a series of named Coleoptera presented by these collectors, but the insects were so damaged by Anthreni &c. that they could not be preserved. It is possible that some of the types were destroyed among them. A son of Drege, the botanist, is now living in Port Elizabeth, but he informed me that he had no remembrance of his father's collections beyond that they had been sold by auction by Thorey either in Altona or Hamburg. Provided the labels have not been x'emoved, the missing types might yet be recognised, for Schonherr appears to have labelled all the specimens which he returned to his correspondents. This is oxxly one example of the great disadvantage of the tendency to hoard up type specimens in private collections, which are, for the most part, liable to be dispersed upoxi the death of their owners; the disappearance of the types often resulting in endless confusion and unnecessary labour for future workers. One could almost wish that it might be possible to render it obligatory for the type, or at least a co-type, of evexy species described in England to be placed in the National Collection, in order to insure its accessibility to all students. In the Coleoptera especially, the immense increase every year in the number of described species should emphasise the importance of attempting to simplify future |