The Colcoptcrisf in Ireland. 141 



some places, and you may see, in scratched stones and pebbles, 

 tokens of the long since melted ice. 



But being more especially of the coleopterist's cult, a dead 

 gull on the shore proves more attractive, and we proceed to 

 investigate the corpse. Alas, it is but a skeleton, and tenanted 

 apparently only by multitudes of a species of Homalhun, that 

 the long elytra and shining chesnut colour at once declare ; 

 but the species is another matter, so we convey a few of them 

 to the laurel-bottle for further examination with a lens. Now, 

 it is this delightful uncertainty which lends such a fascination 

 to the coleopterist's outdoor work. So many of the species 

 are so minute and so obscure, that not even the most ex- 

 perienced veteran can feel absolutely sure what Homalota, 

 Hovialium, Atoinaria, or Trichopteryx\iQ. may have got. Prob- 

 ably patient investigation will ultimately disappoint our hopes, 

 and resolve our unknown into the commonest of the genus; 

 but there is always the chance of the prize, and although this 

 uncertainty entails a vast amount of superfluous labour in 

 securing almost everything small from likely localities, yet it 

 invests them all with the interest of their possible value. So 

 it was with these Homalia shaken out of this skeleton sea-fowl ; 

 they looked goqd, but they turned out nothing better than H. 

 rivulare, probably the most frequent member of the group. 



Strewn about among the shingle are bunches of tangled, 

 sand-coloured seaweeds, and moister olive-green masses; 

 beneath the former we find a small Aleochara, ashy-grey, 

 instead of shining like the so common A. langidnosa, and this 

 proved to be A. algancm, a species of exclusively maritime 

 habits; we also found a few specimens of Cercyon littoralis, 

 a form which a beginner might readily mistake for C. hcemoiT- 

 hoidalis, the most plentiful of this group, but besides the 

 completely different habitat, if the two insects are held up 

 on a level with the eye, so that one can view their contour in 

 profile, this C. littoralis is at once distinguished b}^ its flattened 

 back as contrasted with the boldly convex profile of C. hoemorr- 

 hoidalis. 



Under the heavier and wetter masses were great numbers of 

 Cafiiis xantholoma and C.fiicicola, the latter rather a rare, or at 

 any rate, a local insect. All the members of this genus of 

 Cafitcs inhabit seashores and the margins of tidal rivers, and, 

 indeed, seem to be met with nowhere else. There is a 



