NEW BRITISH SPECIES, ETC., IN 1873. 93 



between that and the most external striae with no perceptible 

 row of smaller irregular interstitial punctures. 



19. Geotrupes stercorarius and its allies. 



Even if Dr. Sharp had not, in the specimen of a proposed 

 novel Catalogue of British Coleoptera, at p. 39 of his pam- 

 phlet on Zoological nomenclature above mentioned, given a 

 place to " Scarabceus spiniger^ Marsh.," and " Scarabceus 

 foveatus, Marsh.,"— I should still have had to include in this 

 Record the species to which he refers, as thej have been 

 rescued from Marsharaian limbo by that astute student of 

 Coprophaga, Baron E. von Harold, to whose courtesy I am 

 indebted for a " Separat-abdruck " of Col., Heft, xi., pp. 87 — 

 101, containing the result of his labours upon G. stercorarius 

 and its allies. 



It has, before this, been noted here that the two insects 

 originally known to us as G. stercorarius and putridarius 

 are abundantly specifically distinct, and that Thomson, find- 

 ing the insect known by the latter name to be really the 

 stercorarius of Linnauis, re-named the first one mesoleius 

 (from one of the various characters which he, more suoy 

 first* appears to have perceived in it). 



But Baron von Harold, from an examination of specimens 

 of the insects known by these names from various parts of 

 Europe, comes to the conclusion that our countryman 

 Marsham was in advance of his age, and that his definition 

 of three species, stercorarius, Linn., and two species 

 described as new, spiniger and foveatus, is correct and 

 must be adopted, — mesoleius, Thomson, sinking to spiniger. 



* This testimony is pleasant to reproduce (E, v. H., I. c. p. 92, note) : — 

 " ilit Recht bezeichnet Herr L, Bedel, selbst eine unserer tiichtigsten 

 " Kriifte, Herrn Thomson als einen der ersten, -wenn nicht als den 

 "ersten, lebenden Entoraologen (Ann. Soc. France, 1872, p, 397.)" 

 E. C.R. 



