COLEOPTERA. 9J 



chiefly upon the leaves of water plants, taking flight 

 freely in sunny and warm weather. They may be found 

 below the surface of the water, where they cling to the 

 plants, but they are not furnished with swimming 

 apparatus. 



The last and smallest of the principal Sections is 

 TRIMERA (or Pseudotrimera), with tarsi composed appa- 

 rently of three joints only. This section has in the 

 Ladybird a representative as familiar as the common 

 house-fly. It may indeed claim a place among domestic 

 insects, often choosing for its winter quarters the grooves 

 and hollows in the plaister mouldings of our ceilings, 

 which are sometimes filled with clusters, several inches 

 long, of these little beetles. 



The ladybird, though usually only common enough 

 to be for its beauty's sake a welcome little visitor, is 

 occasionally to be met with in almost incredible 

 swarms. In the August of 1847 they more or less 

 covered miles of ground in Romney Marsh, and a cloud 

 of them, miles in extent, resembling " a long column 

 of smoke from a steamer," was, from the heights of 

 Ramsgate and Margate, seen hanging over the sea. 

 Next morning the coast was covered with them ; five 

 bushels were swept from Margate Pier, and Ramsgate 

 Harbour was in nearly the same state. The next two 

 days found Brighton in the same state. (See the Times, 

 Aug. 16, 1847.) Five species were counted in Southend 

 on one of these days. 



Similar visitations of ladybirds have occurred at 

 Brighton and in other places on the southern coast in 

 other years, the last being in 1869, when these insects 

 swarmed not only in and about Kent, but were seen in one 

 of the London squares like a cloud passing over the 



