NATURAL LOCALITIES OF BRITISH COLEOPTERA. Ys) 
baffles me, and may, I venture to suggest, have arisen from local 
causes; the rather as I see he reported a like scarcity there 
during the latter portion of the season of 1881. He writes :— 
“Both herb- and tree-feeders have been equally scarce, and, 
when the result of one’s collecting is nil, it is scarcely possible to 
institute a comparison.” 
Sloperton, Kingstown, Co. Dublin, February, 1883. 
NATURAL LOCALITIES OF BRITISH COLEOPTERA. 
By Rev. W. W. Fowter, M.A., F.L.S. 
No. XII.—GENERAL BEATING AND SWEEPING. 
WE now come to rather a wide part of our subject, which 
cannot be much more than touched upon,—general beating and 
sweeping. In numerous forms it has already come in in other 
papers, but yet requires a few words for itself. 
The best form of sweeping-net (a deep gored net, furnished 
with small rings round the edge that slip over the large metal 
ring which screws into the stick) has already been described 
(Entom. xv. 61). An umbrella serves all the purposes of a 
beating-net, but it is better if the whole space just above the ribs 
is covered with calico or some light material, as else minute 
species will often get into and under the ribs, and be lost. 
In sweeping and beating several circumstances have to be 
taken into account,—the time of year, the time of day, the 
general temperature, the direction of the wind, the kind of 
ground, and the flora of the locality. 
As arule nothing much is got by sweeping or beating before 
April, certainly not in the northern counties; occasionally, 
however, a warm day will tempt out hybernating species. On 
March 18th, last year, I swept a considerable number of 
Staphylinide, Halticids and Curculionide, and a few Hemiptera, 
in a wood near Lincoln. Sweeping is productive much later in 
the year than might be expected: on a foggy afternoon in 
autumn—when everything has been soaked with moisture, and 
the sweeping-net has been as wet as if dipped in water—I have 
swept up many good things in Bretby Wood, near Repton; 
Anisotoma grandis, perhaps, being the best species I ever took in 
this way. 
