Odonteus. | LAMELLICORNIA. 41 
In dung; generally taken on the wing; very rare; Charlton (Lady Maryon Wilson, 
one specimen taken in or about the year 1795 *) ; Darenth Wood (Rye); Croydon 
(Mason); Hollington and Guestling, near Hastings (Butler, &c.) ; Stephens records it 
from Hertford, Darenth Wood, Birch Wood, Dartford, Dorking, Coombe Wood, 
Wisbeach, Bristol, Norfolk, and Suffolk. Mr, Mason’s specimen is one of the most 
recent instances of its capture in Britain: seeing a beetle flying past, he knocked it 
down with his stick to see what it was, and found it to be this very rare species. 
GEOTRUPES, Latreille. 
This genus contains upwards of a hundred species, which are chiefly 
found in temperate climates ; the majority occur in Europe, Northern 
and Central Asia, and North America, and very few appear to be inha- 
bitants of tropical countries ; forty-five species are found in Europe, of 
which seven occur in Britain; they are large dark oval and convex 
insects, and may be known by the short thick lamellate club of 
antenne, the obtusely rounded posterior angles of thorax, and the 
coriaceous lobes of the maxilla. G. stercorarius, L., is one of the beetles 
that is most familiar to the ordinary observer of nature; it is the 
‘‘ shard-borne ” beetle of Shakespeare, and goes by the popular names of 
“Dor Beetle,” “ Dumble-dor,” or “ Clock,” and in some districts, as Mr. 
Rye observes, it is vulgarly called the “Lousy Watchman,” from the 
fact that it is perpetually infested with a brown Acarus, a species of 
Gamasus ; it flies with a heavy flight on still warm evenings in summer 
and autumn with a loud humming noise, and occasionally blunders into 
people’s faces, in which case it inflicts rather a sharp blow ; the species 
of Geotrupes live, as a rule, in dung, but are also found in decaying 
fungi, and sometimes at exuding sap; they have the power of making a 
sharp squeaking noise by rubbing the back of the hind femora against 
the abdomen. 
The larva of G. stercorarius has the greater part of the abdominal segments of 
a slate colour or bluish-grey tint; the head and thorax are brownish, and part of 
the first abdominal segment is dirty-white ; the female beetle digs a burrow about 
a foot or a foot and a half deep in the earth below a patch of dung, of which 
she carries down portions, and in them deposits an egg, from which in about eight 
days the larva hatches, and proceeds to feed on the food thus prepared for it; 
when this is consumed it is ready to assume the pupal state, and after a short time 
emerges as a perfect beetle; the larve of the Geotrupina, like those of the Coprina 
and Aphodiina, have the segments divided into transverse folds, but differ from these 
two tribes in the fact that the mandibles are furnished with several teeth, instead 
of being simply bidentate or tridentate. 
I. Thorax of male with three horns in front . . . . . G, TypHa@us, L. 
II. Thorax of male without horns. 
SS ee ee ee ———————— OS 
* This specimen is in Dr. Power’s collection : Lady Maryon Wilson was one of our 
earliest working Coleopterists, and used to take many good species at the end of the 
last century, such as Ludius ferrugineus, Crioceris merdigera, &e.; of the latter 
species I have two or three specimens taken by her in my collection. 
