Mr. Spence's Notice on Aepus fulvescens. 1/9 



ing gradually to the apex, punctate as in H.ferrugineus, the suture, 

 larger punctures, and numerous irregular clouds, particularly to- 

 wards the apex, darker ; under side red, the base of the abdomen 

 darker, ventral laminae coarsely punctate ; legs dull red. 



Taken at Cambridge. 



I have little doubt that all the above species may be found in nu- 

 merous, if not all, parts of the country ; but not having myself au- 

 thentic specimens from other places, I have only ventured to name 

 Cambridge as their locality. 



XXXIX. Notice relative to Aepus fulvescens, and other 

 submarine Coleopterous Insects. By W. Spence, Esq., 

 F.R.S., Hon. Mem. E.S., Sfc. 



[Read 1st June, 1835.] 



M. AuDouiN in a paper read to the Academy of Sciences, and 

 which he has lately had the goodness to send me, has given some 

 interesting details as to the habits of Aepus fulvescens, a very small 

 beetle of the family of Harpalidce, which passes a great portion of its 

 life under the sea ; but he does not seem to have been aware that 

 the same singular mode of existence obtains also in the case of other 

 Coleopterous insects, and had been in part noticed by an English 

 entomologist as long since as the year 1810. As this fact, which I 

 stumbled on by chance within these few weeks, may be unknown to 

 some of the members of the Entomological Society, as it previously 

 was to me, I beg to point it out to their attention by this hasty and 

 brief notice, and the rather as a good deal of further investigation 

 seems to me yet to be required, and which they are very competent 

 to undertake, in order to throw a full light upon the singular facts 

 to which M. Audouin has directed our attention. The English en- 

 tomologist to whom I allude is the late Rev. John Burrell, who in 

 a paper in the first volume of the Transactions of the former En- 

 tomological Society, entitled " Remarks on Staphylinus tricornis," 

 read April 2nd, 1811, informs us that on the 27th April, IS 10, 

 walking on the sand-hills near the sea at Cley, in Norfolk, he ob- 

 served on the kvel spaces between the hills, just as the tide began 

 to ebb and they became sufficiently firm to walk over, numbers of 

 the males of St. (Bledius) tricornis, which were in search of their 

 females which inhabited holes in the sand, in which he found two 



