THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 43 



of the Calden, twenty miles away from Silloth, may also be 

 rioted ; and another still was taken by my father to the late 

 Mr. Heysham to name ; but many insects never came back 

 again, — I can trace four or five specimens. I may further 

 add my father and brother, who went back with Mr. Rothwell 

 to see if any more could be got, still live, and the writer was 

 there, too, and saw the last specimen carried away with the 

 wind and lost to view. Now here we have a vast deal more 

 evidence than many species which pass muster on the faith 

 of a specimen or two. — J. B. Hodgkinson ; 15, Spring Bank, 

 Preston, October 10, 1874. 



Answer to Correspondent. 



James Ashhy. — Beetles in Tea. — I send herewith some 

 beetles and two or three maggots found in some chests of tea. 

 The entire parcel of a hundred chests, or so, is more or less 

 affected. Although the specimens 1 send you are dead, there 

 are plenty of living ones to be found. The tea has been in 

 the bonded warehouse three or four years. Do you think the 

 insects have got into the tea since its arrival in this country, 

 or were they imported with it? The tea is very common, 

 in fact, rubbish, which no respectable dealer would buy, 

 and it will probably be destroyed or exported; therefore 

 the lovers of "the cup that cheers, but does not inebriate," 

 need not be in fear of having a decoction of beetles. 



[These beetles are perfectly familiar to entomologists, and 

 are generally known by the name of Niptus hololeucus. In 

 the year 1838 I found them abundantly in an old cupboard, 

 at Deptford, in company with sundry and divers boots and 

 shoes that had been laid aside as leaky, and therefore useless. 

 Not knowing the insect, and being desirous of obtaining its 

 name, I took a sample set to the late J. F. Stephens, then the 

 highest authority on beetles, and a gentleman who devoted 

 every Wednesday evening to the enlightenment of his less- 

 informed brethren of the net and beating-stick. Finding it 

 unknown to Mr. Stephens I wrote a paper on my discovery, 

 and read the same at a meeting of the Entomological Club, 

 held at the late Mr. Walton's, calling my new insect Ptinus 

 holosericeus. This paper was never published, and had it 



