THE 



ENTOMOLOGIST'S 

 MONTHLY MAGAZINE: 



SECOND SERIES — VOL. XX. 



[VOLUME XLV]. 



A NEW METHOD OP COLLECTING COLEOPTEUA. 

 BY NORMAN H. JOY, M.R.C.S., F.E.S, 



When studying the Coleoptera infesting the nests of birds three 

 years ago, it occurred to me that special forms might haunt the nests 

 of seabirds, such as those of the puffin, the gull, and the cormorant. 

 As I had not the opportunity to take these nests myself, I managed 

 to get into correspondence with some of the lighthouse keepers on the 

 West coast of Ireland, and with a man who visits St. Kilda every year. 

 To the lighthouse keepers I sent some good-sized, strongly made bags, 

 and they returned them filled with the debris of puffins' nests. From 

 St. Kilda, besides cormorants', gannets', and puffins' nests, I obtained 

 haystack refuse, sphagnum, and sheep's dung. I was sufficiently 

 encouraged by my success in this enterprise, although I had found 

 nothing really very rare, to determine this season to extend the idea to 

 collecting moss from the tops of the Scotch mountains. Accordingly, 

 early in the year, I wrote to several keepers of deer-forests, promising 

 a certain reward foi a sack of moss from the top of their nearest high 

 mountain, to be sent to me in May or June. A few of these answered 

 my letters, and to them I sent full instructions as to how to take the 

 moss, and as a result, three sackfulls arrived during the summer. It 

 was certainly very interesting work shaking this moss carefully over a 

 sheet of white paper, but rather monotonous when, as in one case, 

 only five beetles, and those only common ones, were taken from a large 

 sack, which took me several hours to examine. I think on the whole 

 I got my money's worth in beetles and pleasure, for, as will be seen 

 below, some very local species turned up. In Eat. Mo. Mag., Ser. 

 2, xix, p. 281, will be seen an account of an interesting new flea, 

 OrnitJiopsylla IcBtititB, Rothsch., taken from puffins' nests in Scilly. 



tJAEY, 1909. 



