1899] WIKEWOBMS. 65 



near Sittingbourne, Kent, and kindly sent me on May 27th. A con- 

 signment of about a hundred and twenty-six beetles was forwarded to 

 me with the information that they had been caught under pantiles in 

 a Hop-ground at Wingham, Kent, and enquiry was made as to whether 

 they were all the Click Beetles which produce the Wireworm attack. 

 These they all proved to be, with the exception of about three specimens 

 of a " Ground Beetle," easily distinguishable by its much larger size, 

 broader shape, and black colour. 



The Wireworm Beetles are easily known by being very narrow in 

 proportion to their length, and also by their habit when laid on their 

 backs of regaining their position with a sudden spring, accompanied 

 by a clicking sound, whence their common names of " Skip Jacks," or 

 " Click Beetles." Most of the specimens sent were of the common 

 " Small Brown" Click Beetle, Agrlotes obscnrus, Linn. This is about 

 the third of an inch or rather more in length, the breadth about a 

 quarter of the length, and the shape as figured (magnified) at "3," 

 p. 64. The colour of some shade of brown or pitchy, sometimes with 

 the thorax dark, and the wing-cases lighter or darker, but so clothed 

 with short thick ochrey or brownish pubescence as to give the beetles 

 a general dingy brownish appearance whilst still in unrubbed state. 



Besides these, there were about a dozen or more of the " Pasture 

 Click Beetle" (Agriotes sputator, Linn.), which is also a common kind, 

 but rather smaller than the above, being from about a fifth to a quarter 

 of an inch in length. It is not unlike obscunis in colour, being blackish 

 or brown ; sometimes, however, it is wholly tawny, or has the head 

 and thorax (excepting the hinder margin of the latter) black. When 

 fresh it is thickly covered with greyish down. 



Both of the above kinds are very common, and are to be found in 

 beetle state in summer under stones, on grass, in pasture lands, on 

 hedges — in fact, generally distributed. 



The Wireworms, or larvfe, of these and various other species of 

 Elateridce, or Click Beetles, are very well known by their elongate 

 narrow cylindrical shape, and hard yellow shiny coats, altogether 

 resembling a piece of wire of about half an inch, more or less, in 

 length, and less than a sixteenth in breadth. The eggs from which 

 Wireworms hatch are yellowish white and exceedingly small, and are 

 laid in the earth near the plants on which the larvae will feed, or it 

 may be in some of the leafage near the root, and the duration of the 

 life of the worms may be as much as five years. 



As a very special locality for egg-laying, (and one from which the 

 consequent Wireworm infestation is widely s^^read in agricultural 

 operations), is the surface of grass fields, the method of forestalling 

 attack by preventing egg-laying in such situations has long been 

 known ; but the plan of trapping the beetles themselves has not, I 



