THE 



ENTOMOLOGIST'S 

 MONTHLY MAGAZINE: 



SECOND SERIES-VOL. XXII. 



[VOLUME XL VII]. 



A REVISION OF THE BRITISH SPECIES OF HALIPLUS, Latreille. 

 BY JAMES EDWARDS, F.E.S. 



The present paper coutaius, inter alia, a setj^regation of ovir forms 

 of the TuficoUis group on the lines indicated by Julius Gerhardt in an 

 admirable paper published by him more than thirty years ago (Zeitschr. 

 fiir Ent. Breslau, 1877, 34). There he calls particular attention to 

 the advantage to be derived from the use as a differential character, 

 of a certain extremely fine irrorate punctulation found on the elytra 

 of the females. For some reason not easy to understand, subsequent 

 aiithors, whilst not disputing its existence, have ignored the value of 

 this character. The only British writer who has exhibited a working 

 acquaintance with Gerhardt' s paper is Mr. Newbery, but he, imfor- 

 tunately, only availed himself of it to a very limited extent. For 

 example, in introducing Gerhardt's H. immaculatus as British (Ent. 

 Mo. Mag., xUii, 4) he seems to have overlooked the circumstance that 

 his insect from Bury St. Edmund's with the elytra in the female 

 punctulate from the apex to the middle coidd not well be the same as 

 Gerhardt's immacnlatus, in which the females have perfectly smooth 

 elytra. I find that the punctulation in question is stronger at the 

 apex than at the base in those species in which it reaches from the 

 apex to the shoulders ; in one it becomes gradually evanescent from 

 about the middle forward, and in one is confined to the extreme apex 

 and the apical half of the suture. My experience lends no support to the 

 idea that the females of Haliplus are subject to dimorphism. Gerhardt 

 thought that the punctulation when present was confined to the apical 

 halfof the elytra; Wehucke,however (Deutsche Ent. Zeitschr.,1880,224), 

 mentions some species with the elytra punctulate throughout, though 

 he speaks of the female of ruficoUis as punctulate in the apical liaK 

 January, 1911, 



