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swept the Bagous that I had to take my net home before I could examine its 

 contents. May not the insect be nocturnal in its habits, and this in some measure 

 account for its rarity? Mine was evidently a hibernated specimen, come up for a 

 breath of genial spring-night air. — Claudk Moeley, Everton House, Ipswich : 

 November 28th, 1896. 



Sapriiius ceneus, F., and Sapi'inus immundus, Gyll. — In tlie January number of 

 this Magazine Mr. E. A. Newbery expresses a hope that some Coleopterist who has 

 studied the genus Saprinus may be able to give some constant character to enable 

 Entomologists to separate these two species. In 1868, according to the Munich 

 Catalogue, tlie genus consisted of 292 species, and about 110 species have been de- 

 scribed since. Herr J. Schmidt is the best and perhaps the only living authority 

 on the genus as a whole, but it may be taken for certain that tlie characters of nearly 

 all the species are well marked, and that the superficial variations in dorsal sculpture 

 etc., are only misleading to those who do not " look a beetle all over." Mr. Newbery 

 at the time of writing probably had only one species before him, as the insects are 

 not very similar, nor does it require any knowledge of the genus per se to see their 

 differences. In Pascoe's list of Coleoptera, S. ceneus stands next to ■!?. immundua , 

 but in the European Catalogue there are several intervening species, and the insects 

 are so far unlike that it did not occur to Marseul to compare them together. In the 

 "Monograph" he merely placed them with others in the same section. 



Perhaps the two most important characters noted by Marseul are : (1) in <S. 

 immundus (Mon., p. 408) the prosternal stri* are divergent at both extremities, and 

 in S. ceneus (pp. 413, 414) the prosternum is narrowed in the middle and the striae 

 are divergent before and behind ; in otlier words, the keel of the prosternum is 

 ■wider in <S. immundus (especially in the median area) than in iS. ceneus, but the striae 

 are somewhat similarly divergent in both. (2) in *S. immundus the mesosternal 

 marginal stria is interrupted ; in S. ceneus it is entire. Marseul also gives a sexual 

 character for S. ceneus, viz., a shallow impression in the metasternum of $ , which 

 does not exist in S. immundus. 



These are salient and reliable characters, and there are two others equally so : 

 (3) in iS. ceneus the tarsi are relatively long and slender, and in S. immundus they 

 are shorter and moi'e robust. (4) in iS. aneus the femora are comparatively nar- 

 row and the punctuation vague and feeble ; in S. immundus the femora are broader 

 and distinctly and somewhat densely punctulate. The last two characters are 

 conveniently seen in the intermediate pair of legs, but the tarsi on the anterior pair 

 are the best to examine. 



Marseul says that the sutural striae of <S. aeneus are sometimes entire, sometimes 

 not, p. 414 ; it is a character of small importance, as the dorsal strise vary in most 

 of the Saprini. — G. Lewis, 5, Archer's Road, Southampton : January 2nd, 1897. 



Rare Aculeate Hymenoptera. — In a box of Aculcates that I sent to Mr. Saunders 

 to look over were the following four species which he wished me to record : — Crabro 

 aphidum — of this very rare insect Mr. Saunders says, he possesses the (J, but has 

 never seen the 9 ; he marks my specimen aphidum, ^ , with a query. Halictus 

 atrifornts — one cJ , Sutton Coldfield, August, 1895. Passalmcus monilicornis — one 



