Common Beetles of our Countryside 



Phytophaga, but not of the leaping section of the group. 

 The genus is Galerucella and we have in this country 

 about six species of it. This one from the Guelder Rose 

 is Galerucella viburni (named from that tree) all the other 

 species being attached to some aquatic or marsh plant. 

 It is one of the largest of them, the females, which are 

 larger than the males, being often 7 mm. in length. They 

 are yellowish brown beetles oval and flat in shape, with 

 a small head and thorax, and rather long antennae; there 

 is a small black patch on the front of the head, a black 

 mark down the centre and at the sides of the thorax, 

 the scutellum and shoulders of elytra also black. All 

 the rest of the upper surface is of a dull yellowish brown 

 colour, lighter on head and thorax, darker on elytra, 

 very closely and finely punctured, and covered with a 

 fine close, yellow down ; the antennae are black, and the 

 legs yellow brown. 



And so we might go on all the hot summer's afternoon, 

 toiling up the long acclivities of the Downs, and sweeping 

 in their hollows " the green myriads of the peopled 

 grass," for certainly to the coleopterist the Downs 

 offer their greatest attractions in the summer. Unlike 

 the woodlands in whose sheltered depths we can find 

 rotten wood, fungi, dead leaves and other refuges and 

 take beetles the whole year round, all we can do on the 

 Downs when there is no herbage to be swept, is to turn 

 over their flints, or tear in pieces their moss, and on those 

 exposed slopes from November to March that is not a 

 particularly inviting form of the investigation of nature, 

 nor would the most patient investigation reward us with 



28 



