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NOTES ON A NEW BRITISH BEETI.E. 

 Otiorrhy7ichus atiroptmctatus, Gyll. 



WITH REMARKS ON THK DISTRIBUTION OF IRISH ANIMALS. 

 BY GEORGE H. CARPENTER, B SC. 



Three years ago, Mr. H. K. Gore Cuthbert, in a paper on the 

 Weevils of South lyouth,^ recorded a species from the north 

 of the Boyne mouth obtained by beating Alder and Beech as 

 Otiorrhynchus maurus, Gyll., a mountain beetle of which the 

 only Irish specimens were taken in 1875 by Mr. G. C. 

 Champion on Slieve Donard% Mr. Cuthbert remarked that his 

 insects were much lighter in colour than the typical O. maurus. 

 Mr. J. N. Halbert recently took the same species in some 

 numbers at various points in Cos. Dublin, Meath and lyouth, 

 and, with his usual careful discrimination, observed structural 

 differences between it and O. maurus of much greater value 

 than the colour distinction. A suspicion that we had a Weevil 

 new to the British list was awakened, and specimens were 

 sent to some of the leading British coleopterists. One of 

 them, Mr. G. C. Champion, in a recent note,^ has pronounced 

 the insect to be O. auropuftctatus, Gyll., a Pyrenean species, 

 found also in the Auvergne and in Spain, and a most note- 

 worthy addition to our fauna. 



The identification of this Weevil as O. utaurus, Gyll., was 

 natural enough, as, by the table for discriminating the 

 Otiorrhynchi in Canon Fowler's *' Coleoptera of the British 

 Islands,'"* the captor of our insect would be readily led to refer 

 it to that species, with which O. auropunctatus agrees in its 

 unspined front femora, and rugose pronotum and elytra. It 

 is, however, not closely related to- O. maurus^ from which its 

 much longer legs and antennae distinguish it at once. The 

 first two joints of the funiculus of the antennae are consider- 

 ably longer than the succeeding joints, and are themselves of 

 unequal length, the second being half as long again as the 

 first (fig. 2). The British species to which it approaches most 

 nearly is O. tenebricosus, Herbst ; from this, as Mr. Champion 

 points out, it may be easily separated by its smaller size, and 



^ Irish Nat., vol. i,, 1892, p. 158. ^ EhUMo> Mag., vol. xii , p. 82. 



^ Ent. Mo, Mag.y vol. xxxi., 1895, p. 133. * VoL v., p. 174. 



