284 [December, 



or removal from a dry or less suitable to a succulent or more suitable 

 food plant, without incurring the risk of involuntary deportation by 

 the wind, the power of extended leaps might be more advantageous 

 than that of flight. 



Whether this be so or not, it is at least certain that if the 

 possession of effective wings were in any way essential to the well-being 

 of these insects, we should not now find a large proportion of them 

 deprived of those organs, as, on the other hand, we may be confident 

 that their enormously powerful femoral muscles have not been 

 developed merely to provide their owners with the means of an agree- 

 able and exhilarating form of exercise. 



But as we have already remarked, although Lotujitarsi are so 

 abundant, we know little of their economy or life histories. It seems 

 certain that the majority of them hybernate in the perfect form, but 

 whether there are more than two generations in the coui-se of the year, 

 or whether, if so, the summer generation may differ in any respect from 

 that which hybernates, are some of the many points on which we 

 require further information — information which it is for the future to 

 supply, for we can only conclude by the expression of the hope that the 

 superior importance of bionomics to mere systematization in this, as in 

 other groups of Culeoptera, will be more adequately recognized by 

 students who are to come than it has been by those who have gone 

 before. 



Finally, we must thank the following friends and correspondents 

 who have in the most generous manner communicated specimens or 

 even whole collections, and placed at our disposal information without 

 which the preparation of the foregoing notes would have been 

 impossible: — Capt. St. Claire Deville, Messrs. Bedel, du Buysson, 

 Heikertinger and Weise, Prof. T. Hudson Beare, Com. J. J. Walker, 

 Drs. Sharp and Wallace, and Messrs. E. C. Bedwell, H. Britten, 

 Gr. A. Brown, G. C. Champion, F. H. Day, H. C. Dollman, 

 H. St. J. Donisthorpe, E. G. Elhman, A. Fergusson, P. de la Garde, 

 P. Harwood, A. Moncreaff, E. A. Newbery, T. L. Thompson, 

 G-. B. Walsh, E. A. Waterhouse, and W. West. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON LONGITABSUS NIGERBIMUS, Gtll. 



It will be remembered that dmnng the pubhcation of our notes on 

 the British species of Longitarsns, Dr. Sharp recorded the occurrence 

 in sphagnum in the New Forest of L. nigerrimus, Gyll. [Ent. Mo. 

 Mag., XL VII, p. 257] . That species had been introduced to the British 



