No. 115.] 99 



it has never, so far as known to me, been recorded as feeding 

 upon vegetable material. Dr. Fitch remarks of it, after 

 pointing out its resemblance to the four-spotted variety of the 

 striped flea-beetle, Phyllotreta vittata : " Its motion will 

 readily distinguish it from this beetle. It never hops, but 

 sparkling like a diamond in the bright sunshine, it runs briskly in 

 a very serpentive or zig-zag track, a few inches, till it gains some 

 crack in the ground or other covert, in which it abruptly disap- 

 pears. It feeds on other insects — its strength and agility enabling 

 it to overpower those tiiat are much larger than it in size." 



Notwithstanding the ascription of carnivorous habits to this 

 beetle by Dr Fitch and others, yet from the circumstance under 

 which it has been brought to notice, it is quite probable that it is 

 guilty of the charge made against it, of injury to strawberries. 

 True, it belongs to a blood-thirsty family, the Carabidm^ which 

 embraces a large number of our eminently predaceous beetles, most 

 of the species of which are insectivorous, and of essential service in 

 diminishing the number of the injurious pests of our garden and 

 fields. They are not, however, exclusively carnivorous, tor, 

 according to Westwood, some of the species in Europe are known 

 to feed upon growing grain. Thus Zabrus gibhis occasionally 

 destroys entire fields of corn by eating off the young shoots at nigiit ; 

 and species of the genus Ainar^a find their chief support in the 

 pith and stems of grain and succulent roots, while they also eat 

 the larva3 of other insects ( Westwood' s Introduction i, pp. 62, 63). 



As features of the attack of this insect, Mr. Little states that in 

 a bed of five rows of strawberry plants near a stone-wall, the first 

 row was entirely destroyed ; the second, nearly so ; the third, 

 badly iniured, while the fourth and fifth were eaten but little. 

 Another bed, twenty rods from this, had not been injured at all. 

 The explanation of the greatest injury nearest tlie wall may be 

 found, probably, in the known habit of the Bembidium beetles of 

 hiding beneath stones and in crevices of walls. 



The slight doubt that still exists of the Bembidium being the 

 real depredator upon the strawberry will be settled by the experi- 

 ments to be made of confining it with uneaten leaves. Its carnivor- 

 OU8 tastes will also be tested by inclosing small insects with it. 



[The insects needed for the above tests could not be obtained 

 when application was made for them.] 



