10 tttE ENtOMOLOGISx's RECORD. 



date of finding until pupation) forty-seven days appear to be about 

 the length of the pupal state. The last emergence was on July 18th, 

 and none are lying over. The greatest number emerged on July 7th. 

 There seems to be no particular time in the day for emergence, 

 though, perhaps, the majority appeared about mid-day, and none 

 emerged after 4 p.m. I bred a considerable number, and was 

 surprised to find under three per cent, cripples. The proportion 

 of males to females was 1 to 2, as near as may be ; some 

 1^ per cent, were ichneumoned by Phyr/adeum abdominalis, as I 

 understand from Mr. Billups' note in the Ent. Rec, vol. viii., p. 207. 

 I found no noticeable variation in the imagines, even in a considerable 

 number. 



The cocoon made by the larva is very slight, oval, and formed of 

 fine white silken threads and loose earth, when subterranean. If 

 formed in a reed stem, it spins only a very slight white silken cocoon, 

 just attached to the stem. 



Notes on Coleoptera. 



" Mud-larking." — The beetles of a mud-flat. 

 By CLAUDE MOELEY, F.E.S. 



Most of us probably have a more or less dim recollection of the 

 happy daysof our childhood, when " mud-larking " on the sands formed 

 one of the principal of enjoyments. Many of us still do our share 

 of scientific " mud-larking," and, in fact, we could not obtain certain 

 species of Coleoptera and Hemiptera by any other means. Of the 

 former the species most often found belong to the two great sections, 

 Geodephaga and Brachelytra, though most of the others are 

 represented. The time of year at which the greatest number of 

 these beetles may be found is probably the end of May and June, and 

 the mere fact of the sun shining will quite double the number of 

 insects to be seen. That is to say, if you know hon- to see them, for a 

 fisherman, or a poet, might sit on a bank and gaze for hours at a mud- 

 flat a foot or two below him, and see simply nothing, where a 

 coleopterist, seated on the same bank, would, as soon as his eyes 

 became familiarised with the angle of light, see tiny beetles of all 

 shapes, sizes and colours, rushing about in all directions, and, for the 

 most part, for things so small, with incredible alacrity. So fast, in 

 fact, do they go, and so easily and unerringly do they steer their way, 

 that one falls to wondering how they do it, but to find out there and then 

 is simply impossible ; since the pace at which they dart about renders 

 the following of the insects themselves a matter of difficulty, and of their 

 legs, of impossibility ; so we must turn to the cut-and-dried laws of 

 " Insect Propulsion." There we find that each of the six legs is com- 

 posed of a number of hollow tubes, within which are placed tiny 

 muscles ; these muscles, by their expansion and contraction, like our 

 own, are capable, so wonderfully elastic are they, of all the lightning- 

 flashes an insect will perform across a piece of damp mud. We are 

 not in the least surprised to find these legs move in the most logically 

 advantageous manner, for Nature makes nothing but in a way that is 

 best adapted to its environment. Thus we find two legs on one side 

 lifted simultaneously with one on the other — the front and back legs on 

 one side with the middle one on the other — make the first half step, 



