1 74 [August, 



except that he adds for P. dermestoides, " especially oak." I have 

 taken the last-named insect fron; oak, beech, and hornbeam, more freely 

 from hornbeam (at Epping) than from the other trees. P. depressiis Avas 

 introduced as British b}^ Rye (Ent. Mo. Mag. vii, p. 205, 1871) on speci- 

 mens found by J. Ray Hardy in 1870, " in chmks of a very rotten oak, 

 in a yellowish, minute, dusky fungus, like mould," at Knutsford, 

 Cheshire, and he also gives Stretford, in the Manchester district, as a 

 locality. Subsequently, in 1876, Mr. A. Reston found the same species 

 in abundance on the wing at Stretford, in a timber-yard, which must 

 have contained pine as w^ell as oak, though I believe he labelled his 

 insects as having come from the oak. He sent me a long series of it at 

 the time, and these were the only British examples in my collection up 

 to the present jeav. There is still another Cheshire record of P. de- 

 presses, in the "seventies," from Cossus-burrows in Dunham Park* 

 {CJiap2:)ell), a locality that produced Lymexylon navale in those days. 



The sudden appearance of this Pediacus and other beetles in pine- 

 woods, mostly in numbers, in well-worked localities, not only in Surrey, 

 but elsewdiere, is very extraordinary, and only to be explained at present 

 by the suitable conditions — new clearings in woods, with timber or small 

 branches ready for attack, fires, with the resulting required fungi on the 

 charred trees, etc. — pi^vailing at the moment for the multiplication of 

 the insects in question. Such Coleoptera are, Itlelanoplnla acuminata, 

 Crioceplialus ferns, Pterosticltus angustatus, Anchomemis quadripunc- 

 taftfs, Pediacus depressiis, Silvamis hidentattis, S. similis (found by 

 myself at Esher, in September 1874, in prof vision, in stacked cut pine- 

 tops), Corficaria eppelsheimi, Pissodes notatus, etc. Most of them are 

 soon gone, and at least in one case in my own 25 years' experience in the 

 Woking district, that of Anchomemis quadripnncfafns, it is 15 years 

 later before the insect is again met with. Others, like Silvamis similis, 

 disappear altogether. Where these creatures exist at other times is a 

 m^^stery, as, at least in the case of Carabids, there can scai'cely be any 

 possibility of introduction of some of them in inland localities. 



The pines felled at Woking in 1916 now contain innumerable larvae, 

 pupae, and imagines of Tomicus laricis and Hi/lasfes palliatiis in their 

 bark, bvit Mi/elophiliis piniperda and Ilylasies ater, both destructive 

 at times in the district, are onl}' just in evidence, these latter attacking 

 more recently felled trees.t 



Horsell: J»////]7/7/, 1917. 



* This record, like that of Silvamis hidnitatus from oak, from the same looality (Ent. Mo. 

 Mapr. xvi, p. 184), requires eonflrmation. The same remark applies to Chappell's capture of the 

 Histerid Platysoma oblongtim from pine in the Manchester district, commented upon by Eye (op. cit. 

 xii, p. 62). 



t A few days after this note was wrilten pupae and a lew imagines of the Myelophilvs were seen 

 in fmall pines injured liv fire early in the present year, and ^pecimens oi Lycius Irvnneus and 

 Ilyloirupes bajulus taken from the cut pine timber. 



