LOCAL DISTRIBUTION OF INSECTS. 517 



our most splendid weevils (Rhynchites Bacchus). Dead 

 fences are almost as fertile in insects as living one's. In 

 gates, posts, rails, and other timber when felled, the 

 timber-devouring tribes take their station : between the 

 bark and the wood are the Bostrichidce , in the wood 

 itself, the Anobidce and the Capricorn beetles. Here 

 also you may meet with many Hymenoptera, which 

 either devour timber or nidificate in it, as the Siricidte, 

 Chelostoma, Trypoxylon, Sapyga, and several Diptera. 

 In the decaying hedgestakes and sticks, where the 

 Spharia decorticans has turned off the bark, you may 

 meet with Anthribus bremrostris ; with A. latirostris, and 

 other beetles, in S. fraxinea : and A. albinus, which I 

 have more than once captured as it was emerging from 

 the fissure of a gate-post, probably feeds on some in- 

 ternal fungus. The grassy balks that separate open 

 fields usually abound in umbelliferous plants, which are 

 attended by numerous Hymenoptera and Diptera, par- 

 ticularly by the various species of the splendid tribe of 

 Chrysidce : and the grassy banks of fences, where the 

 aspect is sunny, are generally bored by a variety of in- 

 sects of the former Order, to prepare a nest for their 

 young. Andrenidce and Nomadidte particularly select 

 this situation, the latter probably depositing their eggs 

 in the burrows of the former a . By watching these places 

 in the spring, you may perhaps have the good fortune 

 to meet with a Stylops. It is singular, that some insects 

 choose, for their own residence or that of their young, 

 the hardest and most trodden pathways. Thus, some 

 ants will build their subterranean apartments under 



a These, as well as Melecta, are probably a kind of Cuckow-bce. 

 Mon. Ap. Angl. i. 150. 



