1904.] 101 



woods and glades that lie between the hill and my house, and had nearly got 

 there without finding anything worth taking. It was a new experience to me, as 

 up to that time I had always found sonietliing new or interesting during every week- 

 end on whieh I had been able to collect, and this time I had absolutely nothing. 

 Failure in collecting is only an incentive to new devices, and fortunately I thought 

 of my friend Mr. J. J. Walker's advice in 1898, when collecting not many miles off 

 in the >Sitlingbourne district, not to neglect old hedges. I had tried them before, but 

 had never been successful in getting anything worth taking by this means of col- 

 lecting, but I am now inclined to think that this was to a large extent due to 

 attempting to find the insects at the wrong time of the year. 



The time for seai'ching tliem is, I tliink, the late autumn, as then not only 

 are the regular wood and lichen feeders abundant, but an immense number of 

 insects have crawled away from the open jilaces to the protection afforded by the 

 bottom of an old hedge, and are to be taken if the proper mode of collecting is 

 followed ; at the same time many hedges are quite unproductive. The first place at 

 which I tried my luck was a place where the broken-down hedge had been mended 

 up by long hazel boughs and loose bundles, and at once I beat out into my net an 

 insect like a small Antkribus, accompanied by a host of the common Hemipteron, 

 Aneurus Iwvis, Fab., and many Rhinosimus planirostris. Fab. Leaving this spot I 

 proceeded to beat the hedge which bordered the field through which my way lay, 

 separating it from a beech coppice, without much further success, until I came to a 

 place where there was a path through the wood, and a spur of the hedge ran 

 out at an angle from the wood to a gate. This spur, some 20 to 30 feet long, 

 was open on both sides, and composed entirely of dead wood. The upright 

 stakes were chiefly of birch, and there were long horizontal boughs of hazel en- 

 twined ; it was in the last stage of decay, but still standing, and formed an ideal 

 spot for wood-feeders. It was, as I soon found, full of life. In a very few minutes the 

 true Anthribus albinus, L., of both sexes tumbled into the net, and some specimens 

 of the insect previously taken, which proved tlie rare Tropideres niveirostris, F. 



These captures induced me to give a good deal more attention to hedge col- 

 lecting, and it proved very profitable, and though very few of the better insects 

 taken by me occurred in any considerable numbers, the total taken from this little 

 spur is very remarkable. The spur, alas, is now finished for collecting purposes, it 

 has totally collapsed, and a large portion has no doubt gone to light the fires of 

 cottagers passing by the path ; in all, about thirty T. nh^eirostrlsytevn taken in 1902, 

 and about six last year, and most of these have been distributed by me. A few 

 Anthribus albinns, L., occurred in the hedge, and a few more in another hedge in 

 an even greater state of collapse, not far off. 



Before giving a list of beetles and other insects from the hedge, I may add 

 something as to the life of the Tropideres n,\\o. Anthribus; the former appears to 

 emerge as a perfect insect in August, and to be about until the frosts, its hole was 

 not difllcult to find in the hazel boughs, but its life appeared to be spent to a large 

 extent at the bottom of the hedge, and the best way of finding it was to shake the 

 debris at the bottom or the lower entwined pieces over a tray, such as Lepidopterists 

 use for larvffi, or a white sheet, which should be inserted under the hedge as far as 

 possible, and the hedge pulled over it. The beetle appears not to hibernate ; I 

 think it probably passes through a whole generation in a year, as I found it again 



