362 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



depth of 8 feet because of the treacherous dust in which we were 

 digging. At that point the burrow, which had dwindled down 

 to a single tunnel, was still going deeper, descending in .short 

 spirals, and although there were occasional sleeping pockets lead 

 ing off from the gallery, as from those nearer to the surface, they 

 contained nothing but a few scattered fragments of grass. A 

 small Tineid moth (apparently not different from our common 

 clothes moth, Tinea biselliella), was, however, continually com 

 ing up out of the depth of the hole, and this seems to indicate that 

 we might have found at last a true nest or incubation pocket lined 

 with grass and containing insects. The upper portion of the sys 

 tem of galleries was simply an interminable labyrinth of holes in 

 tersecting each other, irregularly and frequently in the upper layers 

 of soil, but deeper down in more or less well defined layers or 

 stores a foot or two apart. We saw, of course, no sign of the 

 rats, but their dung, which is in very small and hard pellets, was 

 scattered about the galleries in single pieces, never in accumula 

 tions. The holes, about the size of a man's wrist, were lined with 

 dry and extremely fine dust, in which only a wingless cricket 

 ( Ceuthophilus n. sp. ?) and an occasional large Tenebrionid larva 

 appeared to live in considerable numbers. The crickets sheltered 

 themselves in pits or small tunnels as large as the little finger, 

 and which were excavated vertically in the roof, extending up 

 wards from the gallery about 2 or 2^ inches. Nevertheless, I 

 found in the upper galleries an occasional specimen of various small 

 grey flies {Ler'ia pectinata Loew, Phorbia fuscipes Zett. and 

 PH. acra Walk.) ; very rarely an Aleocharid with bright red 

 elytra ( ? Aleochara n. sp.) which I found more commonly in 

 the Spermophile holes; a wingless roach {Heterogamia sp.} ; a 

 few specimens of a small Carabid ( Tetragonoderus pallidus} and 

 a small Silphid {Ptomaphagus fisus). The most interesting 

 species is, however, a rather small black Histerid, resembling a 

 Saprinus but having a single very slender claw on all tarsi (nov. 

 gen.} and thus resembling the genus Chelioxenus. I secured 

 only 3 or 4 specimens. 



In one preliminary excavation in which the galleries were small 

 we found also a single old and mutilated, but living, specimen of 

 a large red Aphodius (A. coquilletti Linell) , and a large, most re 

 markable Histerid, also allied to Chelioxenus, having red elytral 



