Excerpt from The Comparative Anatomy of the Male Genital Tube in Coleoptera

Mr. G. C. Champion and Mr. C. J. Gahan have been very good by helping us in the disagreeable task of naming our heterogeneous material.

As regards the taxonomical and phylogenetic portions of the memoir it is desirable that we should say that they are drawn up to display the part that a knowledge of the fertilising structures should have in these two departments Of Coleopterology. The senior author has for many years taken an interest in the taxonomy and phylogeny of Coleoptera, and it would therefore be absurd to pretend that, apart from consideration as to the sexual organs, he is in complete ignorance as to the bearings of other branches of anatomy, of physiology, of ethology and of ontogeny on the two departments mentioned. But the junior author is comparatively a recent student of these departments; and the senior author, therefore, gave him a free hand in drawing up the tables, and has modified them but little. They represent, therefore, fairly well the results that may be obtained in taxonomy and phylogeny from a preliminary study of the male genital tube. We hope that we have made it clear, in other parts of the paper, that our work is only a very imperfect introduction to this comparatively narrow field of inquiry. But we believe the subject will prove to be of great importance when combined with the results derived through other lines of investigation. There is one point, however, in the memoir that has not been based on study of the aedeagus, viz. The families we have made use of. Though we shall have in the course of this memoir to propose several changes as to the families of Coleoptera, it must not be supposed that the families here dealt with have been decided on from the point Of view Of the structure of the genital tube. The forms studied were selected in the first instance simply by our desire to study these structures throughout the whole Order. We may, how ever, say that though certain changes will have to be made, yet our impression is that most of the families at present in use in Coleopterology will have their validity substantiated by a continuance of this study.

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