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Show 440 INSECT.\. which are at the end and diverge, the other is in the inner side, all furnished with small ones. The females, called Doea, have a narrower head and much smaller mandibles. It flies at ni!l'ht in the heat of .summer. Its size and mandibles vary. It i: to one of these varieties that we must refer the Lucane chevre or Olivier, or the L. capreolus of Fabricius. The Lucanus, 50 called by Linnreus, is a species from North America, and very distinct from the preceding. L. caraboides, L.; Oli v., Col., lb., II, 2. Five lines in length; greenish brown; mandibles crescent-shaped, and not surpassing in length that of the head, even in the males( 1 ). There, the eyes are entirely and transversely divided by the edges of the head. The maxillre are terminated by a shorter and narrower lobe than in the preceding Insects, and frequently present a corneous tooth on t~e inner margin. PLATYOERus, Lat. The palpi, maxillary lobes, and ligula arc proportionally shorter than in the preceding subgenus. The mentum forms a transversal square, while in the preceding it is frequently semicircular. It conceals the whole base of the jaws. The mandibles are generally short(2). · The club of the antennre in the remaining Lucanides is composed of the seven last joints. SYNDEsus, Mac L.-Sinodendron, Fab. A small horn on the anterior of the thorax, which is also, as in most of the Passali, marked with a median sulcus. Its separation from the abdomen is also more strongly marked than in Lucanus. The two posterior legs are placed further behind. The antennre are less geniculate( 3 ). The Lucanides of our second section have their antennre simply arcuated, or but slightly geniculate and pilose; the labrum always exposed, crustaceous, and transversal; the (1) I unite the Ceruchua and Platycerua, Mac Leay, with Lucan us. The pro· portions of the mandibles, pal pi, maxillary lobes, ligula and club of the antenna:, do not furnish constaqt and rigorous characters. (2) The Lucanus parallelipedus of Fabricius, forming, with another species, the genus Dorcua of Mac Leay. I also unite to Platycerus the Nigiditta, JEgus, and Figulua of the same learned entomologist. (3) Synodendron cornutum, Fab.; Donov., Insect. of New Holl., tab. I, 4; Syn· deaua cornutus, Mac L., llor. Entom. I, P· 104. · 441 mandibles strong and much dentated, but without any very remarkable sexual difference ; the maxillro entirely corneous with at least two strong teeth; the ligula equally corneous or very hard, situated in a superior emargination of the mentum, and terminated by three points; the abdomen pediculated, presenting the scutellum above, and separated from the thorax by a strangulation or considerable interval. They form the genus PAS SALus, Fab. Restricted by M. Mac Leay to those species in which the club of theantennre consists of but three joints, where the labrum forms a transversal square, and the maxillre have three strong terminal teeth, and two on the inner side in place of the interior lobe. The species, in which the club is composed of five joints, the labrum is very short, and the maxillre have but two teeth, one terminal and the other on the inner side, form his genus PAxiLLus. Finally, in his family of the Passalides, he unites to the preceding the genus Chiron, which we have placed in the tt·ibe of the CoprophagiC 1 ). These Insects are foreign to Europe, and as it would appear, to Africa, being chiefly found in the eastern parts of Asia, and particularly in America. Madame Merian says, that the larva of the species figured by her lives on the roots of the sweet potato. The perfect Insect is not uncommon in the sugar-houses(2). In the second general section of the Coleoptera, or the HETEROMERA, we find five joints in the four first tarsi, and one less in the two last. These Insects all feed on vegetable substances. M. Leon Dufour-Annal. des Sc. Nat., VI, p. 181-has observed that the texture of the male organs of generation approximates them to those of the Scarabreides and Clavicornes; their testes consist of spermatic psules or sacculi. (1) Hor. Entom. I, p. 105, et seq. (2) See Fabricius, Syst. Eleuth., II, p. 155; Web., Obser. Entom.; Palis. de lleauv., Insect. d' Afr. et d' Am6r.; Lat., Gener. Crust. et Insect., IT, P· 136; and Sch~nh., Synon., I, iii, p. 331, and Append., p. 143, 144. VoL. Ill.-3 F |
