COLKOPTERA IN WINTKR. 309 



ing three hours continuously cutting jffyZesi'wMs crenatus from the solid 

 wood of a very tough and apparently quite healthy oak tree, with the 

 temperature at 34*^, and a keen nor'easter driving the sleet into my 

 eyes with delightful persistency ; but I took my series, and returned 

 home rejoicing, under the shadow of a pipe, to a good hot tea ! Mr. 

 WooUey and many other coleopterists rave about beech as the best tree 

 for winter beetles, and I should like to do so too, but there are none in 

 these parts, saving such as stand in gardens or other too well cultivated 

 spots. Personally I have always found willow trees best, for, if there 

 is nothing especially choice, one at least gets a great number and 

 often a fair variety of things ; those trees which stand on the banks of 

 streams should be worked with greatest success, since the semi-aquatic 

 beetles, such as th° Prasocures, invariably walk up something tall in 

 order to avoid " February fill-dyke," and floods generally, and would 

 in this respect appear wiser in their generation than Chaerocamjja 

 elpenor, most of whose pupse must surely be drowned, as they lie 

 among the lady's-bed-straw, in our flooded water-meadows, for perhaps 

 six weeks or so. 



Floods, by-the-bye, are the cause whose eft'ect is another pabulum 

 much afl'ected by beetles, but this is generally after the new year 

 has set in. The refuse, left upon the meadows by the sinking 

 again of the waters, has been washed from the river-banks, sur- 

 rounding ditches, and, in fact, whencesoever the flood was able to 

 sweep it. This will be found a most prolific beetle-trap, and one 

 that may be carried away in a sack or bag, and brought home for diligent 

 examination, which is quite impracticable in the field, owing to the 

 exceedingly minute species it invariably contains. Last February 

 I took over a hundred and fifty species from a single bag of this rejecta- 

 menta, amongst which were twenty-three specimens of the very rare 

 Trachys troglodytes, and, a day or two later, the fourth (I believe) 

 British specimen of Baijotis diglyptus, having taken the third at about 

 the same spot a year previously. Bags of moss may be brought home 

 in like manner from anywhere with good results, but preferably from 

 the open places and glades in woods, and will be found to contain 

 many rare things it is hardly possible to obtain, excepting by the 

 merest chance otherwise. Philonthus hicens, one of our rarest species 

 of the genus, is obtained almost exclusively by this means. 



When in the transition stage between moths and beetles, I brought 

 home a bag full of dead leaves from a spinny at Epsom, and was 

 exceedingly elated to find curled up great numbers of Otiorrhjnchus 

 picipes, which I carefully carded and sought diligently to identify. I was 

 equally fortunate in the other order, Lepidoptera, which showed up some 

 half-dozen larvae of Noctua xanthographa I Mr. Ford reminds me 

 that about Christmas, or soon after, the water-net may be brought 

 into requisition with advantage, if the winter be an open one, as good 

 Hydradephaga and Palpicornia are beginning to emerge in our ponds 

 and ditches, and by the middle of February the majority of those 

 species which occur ubiquitously should be in full swing ; but it is 

 hard to specify a time for any particular species, for, though they 

 undoubtedly emerge from the pupa in rotation year by year, no sec- 

 tion of the Coleoptera is probably affected more by atmospheric influ- 

 ences. Altogether the coleopterist has a rather gay time in the winter, 

 never feels that he cannot obtain new species to add to his collection 



