200 Dr. Heineken’s Entomological Notices. 
scription the elytra are mucronate ; now Fabricius, in the Supplement to 
the Entomologia Systematica says, ‘ elytra nullo modo acuminata.”’ La- 
treille too, in the “‘ Histoire, &c.,’’ when he considered the Bl, similis as 
a variety only of the Bl. mortisaga, says, ‘ peut-étre est-ce le Blaps ob- 
** tus de Fabr.?”’ but in the “ Genera, &c.’’ a more recent work, and 
in which he establishes it as a species, he is silent about its being syno- 
nymous with the Bl. obtus« of Fabricius. Mr. Curtis appears to me 
also to be in error about the sexual distinctions. He says that the elytra 
are mucronate, ‘‘ especially in the males, in which sex there is a fasci- 
** cule of hair at the base of the second:abdominal joint beneath.” In 
some dozens of specimens (for it is abundant here) those with a tuft of 
hair had also mucronated elytra; and as one not having either of these 
peculiarities protruded the penis when dropt into boiling water, I have 
kept it as a better proof than many dissections could afford, that the con- 
trary is the case, and that the prolonged elytra and tuft of hair are female 
peculiarities. Messrs. Kirby and Spence say of the Blapside generally, 
‘* elytra mucronate in the females,’’ but neither they nor any other 
writer besides Mr. Curtis mention, as far as I am aware, the tuft of hair. 
The Blaps gages, and its small variety, which Latreille considers 
Blaps mortisaga, Herbst, have it in one sex also. 
Cc. HEINEKEN, M.D. 
Funchal, Madeira, 8th August, 1829. 
P.S. As I conclude that a poetical licence will not always be allow- 
able with the Zoological Journal, I will avail myself a little further of 
the present, to ask what birds Shakspeare means in ‘A Midsummer 
Night’s Dream,” by “ russet-pated Choughs, many in sort.””—The bird 
now, I believe, commonly called “ Chough’? (Pyrrhocorax graculus, 
Temm.) is not russet-pated ; neither are the Pie, Daw, Hooded Crow, 
&c., and vet it is evident by the succeeding line, ‘‘ Rising and cawing,” 
&c. that the birds he referred to belonged to this group. ‘‘ Many in 
“© sort,”’* too, would either imply variety of plumage, or several spe- 
cies : now both Fleming and Bewick give only one species ef Chough, 
and the only variety of consequence consists, I believe, in the bill and 
legs of the young being black instead of red. C. H. 
® Many in sort means nothing more than many in company. Of the conti- 
nual use of sort in this sense, scores of instances could be adduced,—E. ‘T. B. 
