Tihine in rafts. The timber was generally dragged ashore aud piled up 

 along a low stone wall at the ' Untere Rheinweg.' Between the wall and 

 the trunks sufficient space was left for a man to get along. I soon found 

 out that the wall thus shaded from the glare of the sun formed a retreat for 

 lots of 'good things' coleopterologically speaking. Hence I got into the 

 habit of inspecting it closely and regularly. One hot afternoon in summer 

 I caught sight of a dozing creature I had never seen before; it looked hke 

 one of the Elateridse, and yet there was something uncanny about its facies, 

 which did not tally with what I knew of that group. "V\Tiile thus 

 speculating, I must involuntarily have breathed on the beetle, because 

 suddenly it dropped to the ground and began to shuffle along very rapidly 

 in a peculiar jerking and rolling fashion, reminding me vividly of the 

 awkward but rapid motion of a Mordella. Then of course I pounced down 

 upon it, and once safely in the spirit bottle its palpi and a look at the breast 

 showed me that I had captured Serropalpus striatus, the only specimen I 

 ever saw alive. Many years afterwards, on the 13th of July, 1869, my 

 friend Mr. H. Knecht took another specimen, while crossing the Rhine on 

 a ferry a few hundred yards above the spot where mine was captured. The 

 path of that ferry is daily crossed by hundreds of pine-rafts. Thus we have 

 here two instances of Serropalpus occurring, one at a distance of two feet 

 from a pile of iir-timber, and both in the immediate vicinity of the route of 

 numerous pine-rafts. I am not aware that other specimens have recently 

 been taken at or near Basle ; on the other hand I have to state that the 

 same friend has informed me since, that in the summer of 1871, Mr. Erne 

 took at Mulhouse, in Alsatia, about two hundred examples, but whether 

 from growing firs, or dead, decorticated trees, I am not told. It should, 

 however, be stated, that Mulhouse is one of the chief depots of the timber 

 trade, and draws its supplies through the canal branching off at Huningne, 

 just below Basle. The insect, although usually fir-loving, is, however, not 

 confined to resinous trees, as Abbate Giuseppe Stabile took it at Macuguaga 

 in Switzerland, off alders ( Alnus). Secondly, a word as to how the curious 

 blunder ' Hellwing ' may have originated in M. Grenier's * Catalogue.' Of 

 course to turn up an entomological author of the name ' Hellwing ' would 

 now be almost as interesting as finding some more Serropalpi in a bundle of 

 hose at Leicester (Ent. Annual, 1872, p. 76), but we all know that there 

 lived once a Pomeranian entomologist, J. Ch. L. Hellwig, who created the 

 genus Hallomenus, used among others by Illiger and Panzer, and that this 

 genus Hallomenus, of Hellwig, contains even now the next of kin of Serro- 

 palpus striatus of Hellenius. When, therefore, a French author meets in 

 a German work with a genus Hallomenus, of Hellwig (usually abbreviated 

 Hellw.), and next to it he has to place a genus Serropalpus of the Swede 

 Hellenius (usually abbreviated Hellen.), surely some allowance may be made 

 for the 'printer's devil.' It is, however, amusing to see that precisely the 



