1917.] 23'3 



Rediscovery of Tapinotus sellatus F. — Coleopterists should be pleased to 

 learn of the reoccurrence of this very rare aud pretty Curculio in the Norfolk Fens 

 after a lapse of seventy-one years. In June last I spent a week in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Horning with the object of making a thorough search for Taj^hiotus 

 sellatus and Bngous binodalus, two of our rarest Curculionidae that had long 

 ago occurred there, and after much hard work and constant torment from 

 biting and stinging Diptera, I had the gratification of finding a fine specimen 

 of the Tapinotus by grubbing at the roots of the dense vegetation on the bank 

 of one of the numerous dykes, on June 9th, the last day but one of my stay 

 there. I had previously most carefully seai'ched the foliage, stems, and roots 

 of its reputed food-plant, Lysimachia vulgaris, without success, and there was 

 none of this plant, nor of L. thyrsiflora, observable anywhere near the spot 

 where I found the beetle. 



Only two authentic British specimens of Tapinotus were previously known, 

 the first of them was found in moss at Horning, March 6th, 1838, by the 

 Rev. Laundy Brown — this was in the Power collection and is now in 

 the British Museum; the second, which is merely stated in Fowler's 

 " Ooleoptera of the British Islands " to be in the WoUaston collection, is, I 

 find, fully recorded in the "Zoologist," 1846, p. 1517, and was taken by 

 T. V. Wollaston at Whittlesea Mere, in June 1846 — this specimen is now in 

 tlie Crotch collection at the Cambridge University Museum, and Mr. Hugh 

 Scott has obligingly given me an opportunity of examining it. Wollaston, in 

 his record, states that he had been told by Mr. Walton that there was a speci- 

 men in the possession of Curtis said to have been taken in Suffolk; but this 

 specimen seems to have never been recorded, as far as I can discover, and is 

 now untraceable. 



2\ sellatus in its white and black coloration bears some resemblance to 

 Poophayus sisymbrii, which occurs I'ather plentifully about Horning, but is 

 rather larger and of a heavier build, and the conspicuous saddle-like black 

 patch across the elytra, from which it takes its name, renders it too distinct to 

 be likely to be mistaken for that common and widely distributed species. It 

 certainl}- seems strange that it should have remained undetected for so many 

 years in a locality that is so well worked over by Coleopterists. There is a 

 characteristic figure of it by Rye on the cover of the " Entomologist's Annual " 

 fur 1871. 



I may add that I failed to find Bayous binodulus although I spent many 

 hours in dragging dykes in which its reputed food-plant, Strativtes aloides, 

 grows in abundance. — O. E. Janson, 95, Claremont Road, Ilighgate : 

 September 17th, 191". 



The yenus Paraph yt.osus niihi: synonymical Jiote. — In the June number of 

 this Magazine, ante, p. 125, I used the above generic name for an insect 

 captured by myself at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, and determined 

 as Phytosus atriceps Waterh. This determination proves to be incorrect, the 

 species being really referable to P. darxoini of the same author, from the same 

 Islands, a closely allied form. Moreover, Dr. Fenyes has drawn my attention 

 to a paper in the Report on the '' Deutsche Siid-polar-Expedition," vol. x, 

 Zoology, vol. ii, pt. iv, 1908, p. 377, in which Enderleiu has taken the 

 P. atriceps of Waterhouse as the type of a new genus, Antarctophytosus. 



U 



