1919.) 107 



freslily cut wood ; but in the older and drier sawdust, used to cover a corduroy 

 road running across the very boggy ground from the mill to the places where 

 the trees were being felled, tlie species was entirely replaced by the nearly 

 allied and much commoner P. niyrita F., of which a dozen examples were 

 bottled at random along the edges of the road. It is evident that P. angustatus 

 requires the sawdust with a sappy flavour, doubtless on account of the 

 numerous Epuraea, lihizophagtts, Scolytids, etc., to be found there, upon .<-ouie 

 of which it must feed. I saw none on the adjacent charred ground. — 

 G, C. Champion, Horsell : Ajn-il 19th, 1919. 



Ptinus sexpunctatus Panz. and Osmia rufa Linn. — I have received from 

 Til'r. C. Glanville Clutterbuck numerous specimens of P. sexpunctatus. These 

 were discovered in Gloucester by a builder, " who said that they had eaten 

 holes in some lead ou a root" ! ! " The only Suffolk record is, " Occasionally 

 near Bungay " by Dr. Garneys, who took examples of it in his house there on 

 May 3rd, 1861. I have never met with the insect in the course of thirty years' 

 collecting. Osinia rufa, pupae of which were discovered at the same time in 

 Gloucester, is more likely to have damaged the lead ; though I have never 

 heard of such an occurrence.— Claude Morlp:y, INIonk Soham House, 

 Suffolk : April 5th, 1919. 



Deronedes depresms Fabr. and elegans Panz. — In the " Annals and 

 Magazine of Natural History," ser. 9, vol. iii, pp. 293-308, pis. 7 and 8, April 

 1919, Capt. F. Balfour-Browne gives au exhaustive account of these two 

 Dvtiscid beetles, hitherto treated as synonymous in our text-books, but which 

 he considers to be specifically distinct. One of these, elegans Panz., he says is 

 common throughout England and Scotland, while the other, depressus Fabr., 

 seems to be limited in its distribution, being confined, so fjir as he knows at 

 present, to Scotland and the North of England and to Ireland, where it is 

 apparently the only one found. The characters upon which the two specie.s 

 may be separated are said to be three in number: (1) the shape of the thorax 

 in S "•nd $ , (-) the form of the anterior tarsal claws in cJ , and (3) the form of 

 the aedeagus. The actual differences are not given in tabular form, but they 

 are shown on the two plates, an enlarged S and $ of each species being 

 figured, as well as the other structures mentioned ; variations in the form of 

 the aedeagus are illustrated in text-figures on p. 297, from nine examples 

 of each insect. The article include.s a special account of the Thorax, Anterior 

 tarsal claws of the males, and Aedeagus, the Habitat and Britannic 

 Distribution (which is given in great detail), and a full Bibliography. — Eds. 



Notes on the habits of Heterocerus. — In a paper in the " Canadian 

 Entomologist " for February 1019, vol. li, p. 25, pi. 1, under the heading 

 " Popular and Practical Entomology, Notes on the habits of Heterocerus 

 beetles" (7f. pullidus Say and H. tristis Mann.), Mr. G. B. Claycomb gives a 

 very interesting account of these insects, illustrated by a plate showing : 

 (1) mud bar where the beetles breed, (2) burrows made by the larvae, 

 (3) pupal cases, (4) adult beetle [H. tristis], (5) eggs, (6) larva, (7) larva 

 ready to pupate, (8) pupa. He writes as follows : — " In the hot dry days of 

 summer, when the creeks run low and the mud bars become numerotis along 

 the margins of the streams, a common sight on this recently deposited mud is 



