Note on the chemical composition of the 
red=coloured secretion of «Timarcha tenebricosa », 
by E. WACE CARLIER, MD, F.R.S.E., F. E. S., etc., 
Professor of Physiology, and C. LOVATT Evans (Birmingham). 
In April of the year 1910, on the last day of my holiday in 
Norfolk, I gathered 16 examples of this bloody-nosed Beetle, and 
observing how copiously they poured forth their characteristic 
secretion on the slightest provocation, 1t occurred to me that 
enough might be available for chemical analysis if they were kept 
alive, properly fed, and irritated at regular intervals, say every 
24 hours. 
It was quite noticeable that some individuals produced more 
secretion than others, the females, which are larger than the males, 
usually yielding most, but even amongst these the quantity varied 
considerably, and though they were kept on a moist grass sod, in 
conditions as nearly natural as possible, the amount yielded 
gradually diminished in quantity as time went on, and practically 
ceased after about a week or ten days, the last specimen dying 
some three weeks after the date of capture. I was not successful in 
obtaining a second supply of these Beetles after my return here, as 
they seem to have emerged unusually early this year, and are not 
common in the immediate neighbourhood of Birmingham. 
Mr. C. LOVATT EVANS, an expert chemist working in my 
laboratory, undertook to analyse this secretion for me, and devised 
some ingenious methods for dealing with the minute quantity of 
secretion daily available. His report is appended. 
As far as I am aware, no attempt to gain an insight into the 
chemical characters of this secretion has been undertaken in this 
