254 Short Conimunications : — 



The Goerius {^taphylimis) blens, or Great Rove Beetle^ has, 

 in some places, the complimentary title of the devil's coach- 

 horse ; and, by the children in Cambridgeshire, is called 

 cocktail, from its habit of turning up, when irritated, its ab- 

 domen, armed at the extremity, over its body or thorax. 

 This creature kills and devours beetles small and large, ear- 

 wigs, woodlice (Oniscus ^sellus), earthworms, perhaps glow- 

 worms (see before), and I have known it eat of the putrid 

 remains of the great snail of gardens [Hh\vK aspersa). To 

 the earthworm the Goerius is a dire enemy. It fixes its 

 piercing cutting mandibles into the soft flesh of the worm, and 

 almost buries its head within it, and becomes too fastly fixed 

 for all the writhing and contortions of the worm to produce 

 the effect of dislodging it. In the course of gardening prac- 

 tice, I have seen several earthworms under this painful inflic- 

 tion from individuals of the Goerius. The instance of its 

 eating of the putrid remains of a garden snail, I witnessed on 

 July 8. 1829. My memorandum says, " this might be 

 because that, in consequence of the heat now, no dewworms 

 occur near the earth's surface." On October 16. 1831, I 

 met with a G. 51ens, accompanied by the following circum- 

 stances : — it lay dead in a bye footpath ; it had been partially 

 crushed, and had in its mandibles a dead earwig, while the 

 earwig had within its forceps a tarsus of, and off the left 

 fore leg of, the Goerius. Near the Goerius lay a pearly egg, 

 about two tenths of an inch long, and more than one tenth of 

 an inch in diameter. The shell of the egg was of the con- 

 sistence of parchment, and the yolk it enclosed was viscous 

 and of a yellowish white colour. This, doubtless, was the 

 egg of the Goerius which the same passing foot that had par- 

 tially crushed its body, and thus destroyed the destroyer, 

 had, perhaps, prematurely forced out of it. I dissected the 

 remains of the Goerius, but did not perceive another egg, or 

 the rudiments of one, within them. 



In Kirby and Spence's Introd, ed. 1818, vol. ii. p. 237.» 

 5taphylinus (Goerius) olens F. and the Forficula gigantea F, 

 are mentioned as insects which brandish their armed ab- 

 domens as a " means of defence." It may be right to add to 

 these the common earwig (Forficula auricularia), which, in a 

 moment, if molested about the head, endeavours to punish 

 the molester with the forceps at its tail : so also, doubtless, 

 the F. minor (on whose flight I have recorded a fact in 

 IV. p. 436.) In Kirby and S^ence^s Introd., ed. 1818, vol. iii. 

 p. 33., iStaphylinus olens is set down at one twelfth of an inch 

 in length : is not this a misprint for 1x2 ii"** ? — J- ^• 



The Wasp Beetle {Clyius Arietis), when impaled, produces an 



