[ *33 ] 

 FEBRUARY COLEOPTERA FROM ARMAGH. 



BY W. E. SHARP. 



Of all the votaries of practical Biology it is probable that the 

 Coleopterist feels least the limitations of locality and season. 

 There is indeed not a day in the circle of the year, except 

 during hard frost or deep snow, not a square foot from 

 mountain top to lake bottom which may not afford him spoil 

 or sport. There are coleoptera to be found in London bake- 

 houses and beneath high-water mark on our shores, they exist 

 everywhere and they are always in season. Any random 

 handful of moss or haystack refuse, or vegetable litter, may 

 provide the student, especially the beginner, with material for 

 the work of weeks. How many species would the L,epidopterist 

 or the Hymenopterist be likely to discover of their favourite 

 groups alive and unimpaired in a tangled bunch of decayed 

 herbage sent in a bag half across a kingdom ? 



Yet the writer, when our rural Cheshire postman delivered 

 with evident relief a stout canvas bag, bearing the post-mark 

 of Armagh, heavy with wet moss and indeed itself dripping 

 with water, knew that in this unpleasantly moist parcel 

 myriads of interesting, and probably some, to him, new 

 Coleoptera were lurking, and rejoiced in the prospect of the 

 beetles of an acre comprehended in a bushel. The time was 

 immediately after a day or two's heavy February rain, the 

 origin of the parcel the kindness of the Rev. W. F. Johnson 

 of Armagh, who had gone to the trouble of collecting a quantity 

 of the indefinite refuse which collects after a flood in a locality 

 near that town, known as the Mullinures. 



In an article on Armagh Coleoptera {Irish Nahiralist, vol. i., 

 p. 15), the Rev. W. Johnson has already explained the nature 

 of this ground, and given a list of some of its beetle inhabitants. 

 It has however occurred to me that it might be interesting if 

 I were to very shortly enumerate the actual species which 

 were found in this mass of not more than seven or eight pounds 

 of " flood refuse." My method of capture was to shake out the 

 litter (in a common garden sieve, a few handfuls at a time), 

 over a large white dish with steep sides. A moistened 

 finger-tip transferred the beetles to a laurel bottle and their 

 doom. 



