December, 1910. IJie Irish Naturalist. 245 



NOTES ON SOME IRISH COEEOPTERA. 



BY W. E. SHARP, F.K.S. 



.Many j^ears have elapsed since the present writer first had the 

 privilege of contributing a few notes on the Coleoptera of 

 Ireland to the pages of The Irish Naturalist, and since that 

 time our knowledge of the distribution of the order in Ireland 

 has been very materially increased — the excellent and ex- 

 haustive list of the Irish beetles, by Messrs. Johnson and 

 Halbert, has been published, and although large areas in the 

 island still remain unexplored by the student of its Coleoptera, 

 still it seems improbable that much can be added to what are 

 now the well-ascertained facts of Irish faunistic distribution. 



The shores of the great northern lough, however, or those 

 of the county of Dublin, can hardly be considered quite as 

 unexplored territory, and the only apology that can indeed be 

 offered for the following brief notes lies in the fact that the 

 species encountered were those prevalent at a timeof3'ear 

 w^hen these localities have not, perhaps, often been visited by 

 collectors, and that the occurrence and proportion of their 

 beetle inhabitants vary to such an extent as to make the 

 results of any approximately discriminative collecting at any 

 particular time worth the recording. 



It was a dull and rather chilly morning in mid-September, 

 w^hen the writer discovered himself walking along that 

 straight and distinctly uninterCvSting road which leads from 

 the town of Eurgan to the shore of Eough Neagh, The cul- 

 tivated land passed, a more or less narrow strip of watery 

 foreshore sustained a thick growth of coarse grass. Ragweed, 

 various crucifers, &c., giving place, irregularly, to the shining 

 mud and bare sand of the actual shore, and then, to the 

 horizon, the quiet grey waters of the great lake. 



The first operation was to sweep this coarse marsh herbage, 

 and the two beetles revealed most abtmdantly by this process 

 were Homalota gemhia, Er., in profusion, and very commonly 

 Phyllotreta exclamationis, Thunb. Othe rcaptureswere Chryso. 

 7nela hypcrici, Forst., and Cassida equestris, F. 



On the mud-flats of the shore itself the hoofs of wandering 

 cattle had made little circular depressions which had become 

 filled with water, and by turning down the edges of these 

 Laccobius viinutus, E-, appeared in extraordinary abundance. 



