OQfy (November, 



carefully verified; it is the C. granulatus of Stephens (Illustrations, Manfl.,i, p. 51, 

 pi. iv, fig. 1), who records four examples as "taken in a dark pit near Gravesend in 

 the spring of 1826 ;" there appears to be no other British record, but there is no 

 reason why the insect should not occur in Britain, as it is widely spread throughout 

 northern and central Europe, and reaches as far south as the Pyrenees and northern 

 Italy.— W. W. F.] 



Psammobiu.i porcicoUis, III. — Within the last twelve months I have made three 

 excursions to Whitsand Bay, Cornwall, in company with my friend Mr. J. H. Keys, 

 of Plymouth, to search for Psammobius porcicoUis in its original and, so far as I am 

 aware, sole British locality. On each occasion we have found the little Scarabseid 

 in at least fair numbers, and I am tempted to give some account of the habits of one 

 of the most local and rare of our British Coleoptera. 



The first specimen taken by me in June, 1875 {cf. Ent. Mo. Mag., Ser. I, vol. xii, 

 p 64), was evidently a straggler from its head -quarters, which I found in the following 

 August (/. c. p. 108) in a sandy bank (now occupied by rifle butts) in the " chine " 

 below Fort Tregantle. Here it occurred not rarely at roots of small plants {Leon- 

 todon, Plantago, &c.), as well as under small stones, but I found it only on one 

 occasion. With the exception of a single specimen taken by myself one miserably 

 wet day in May, 1879, no more examples were obtained for many years, though 

 Mr. Bignell, Mr. Keys and I made several excursions to Tregantle at various times, 

 especially to look for it. About the middle of September, 1891, Mr. Keys discovered 

 a new station for the Psammobius at some little distance from the original spot 

 (Ent. Mo. Mag., Ser. II, vol. iii, p. 24). At that time it would seem to have gone 

 into winter quarters, as Mr. Keys found some of his specimens buried to a depth of 

 at least six inches in the sand under tufts of grass growing at the top of the cliffs. 



At present Psammobius porcicoUis appears to be restricted to a space of a few 

 yards square in extent, about halfway up the cliffs, and 30 or 40 feet above high- 

 water mark, where the clean sand of the beach passes into a sort of loam, the debris 

 of the schistose rock of which the cliffs are composed. Here it occurs sparingly, in 

 company with Harpalus tenebrosus, under the scattered and partially embedded 

 stones, and frequently in pairs. It is usually found in a burrow about an inch long, 

 either at the side or just under the edge of the stones, and is frequently so coated 

 with red earth as not to be at once discernible when the stone is raised. It is about 

 the most sluggish beetle that I know, and in the hottest weather I have never seen 

 one on the move or even on the surface of the ground. This is also the case at 

 Gibraltar and other Mediterranean coast localities where the insect is common. It 

 appears to be obtainable during the whole of the spring and summer, as this year I 

 found it on March 25th, and agam in August, some of the specimens taken on the 

 latter occasion being rather immature. More than once I have observed a whitish 

 grub, like that of an Aphodius, under the stones with the Psammobius, which is 

 probably its larva. 



The presence of a colony of Psammobius porcicoUis on our coast is interesting 

 from the point of view of its distribution, which on the Continent appears to be 

 decidedly southern. Mulsant (Hist. Nat. des Coleopteres de France, Laraellicornes, 



