1884.1 161 



brood are said to feed in April in the flower stem of Tussilago farfara, just below the 

 flower head ; but, by the time the larvse of the second brood should be feeding, the 

 flowers have of course long been over, and the larvae must feed on or in some other 

 part of the plant. To me there seems little doubt that this is the solution to the 

 problem by Mr. C. S. G-regson in the Entomologist for July, 1873, p. 427, where he 

 says, " I once bred a gonodactylus-Yike insect from a larva found feeding in a kind of 

 gallery made in, or under, the woolly under-side of a coltsfoot leaf found growing 

 on the limestone rocks at Llanferraa in June."— G-EO. T. Poeeitt, Huddersfield : 

 November 11th, 1884. 



Notes on Dermestes vulpinus and other beetles in Sheppey. — About the end of 

 October, having heard casually that a bone-boiling works at Queenborough was 

 greatly infested with "bugs," which the workmen employed therein could not keep 

 out of their houses, I took advantage of a cold, and consequent loss of the sense of 

 smell for a time, to stroll over and see what the creatures really were. I never before 

 saw beetles in such amazing abundance, the whitewashed walls in the interior of 

 the buildings being literally blackened with Dermestes vulpinus, which could also 

 j be picked up by handfuls under bones, bits of sacking, &c., on the ground. With it 

 Necrobia rufipes occurred in nearly, if not quite equal numbers, Coryncztes violaceus 

 m\di Alphitobius piceus hexug B\m ^e\\ represented: the last-mentioned beetle was 

 more retiring in its habits than the other three, and was usually to be found in the 

 folds of the sacks containing the bones. 



The foreman of the works complained bitterly of the damage done to the wood- 

 work of the building by the "bugs," and showed me a thick oak plank, about 12 

 feet long by a foot, wide, reduced to a perfect honeycomb by the ravages of the 

 Dermestes larvae. These, when full-grown, had bored into the solid timber to change 

 to pupae, of which I dug out numbers with the point of a knife, as well as many 

 imagos in a pallid and iminature condition. The other beetles appeared to do no 

 damage whatever. Some fowls were kept in the works, in the endeavour to reduce 

 the number of beetles, if possible j but they appeared to prefer picking the scraps 

 of meat off the bones, which, I was informed, came from various parts of the world, 

 but the greater portion was brought from South America. 



On the same day I found a specimen of the rare Aphodius consputus, Cr. 

 (named for me by the Eev. W. W. Fowler) in wet debris and dead grass on the bank 

 of a fresh-water ditch, in company with large numbers of Litodactylus leucogaster 

 and Pachyrhinus canaliculatus. 



In the course of a walk along the Sheppey Cliffs yesterday, I found Erirhinns 

 scirpi not rarely in dead Typha Icitifolia, hibernating in the galleries bored in the 

 plant by the larvae of Nonagria typhce. With it were Limnichus pygmmis (very 

 rarely), Telmatophilus typhce (in profusion), &c., &c. — James J. Walkbe, 23, 

 Ranelagh Road, Marine Town, Sheerness : November l^th, 1884. 



Note on JSelophorus crenatus, Rey, as a British species. — In a paper by M. CI. 

 Rey, just published in the Revue d'Entomologie, vol. iii, No. 9, entitled " Notices 

 Bur les Palpicornes, et diagnoses d'especes nouvelles ou pen connues," there appears 

 the following notice of a species of Relophorus, which is recorded as from Britain 

 only : " Helophorus crenatus, Rey.— This species is related both to H. strigifrons, 

 Thorns., and H. planicollis, Thorns. It has a less thick-set (ramasse) form than the 



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