Common Beetles of our Countryside 



and then carved and grooved and hollowed into mere 

 and llyn, grim precipice and desolate valley, by the 

 heavy hand of the ice of succeeding years. In Sussex 

 and in Wiltshire one is more aware of the slow, quiet, 

 ceaseless denudation of the centuries, exerted through 

 millions of years as it is to-day, that has planed down 

 their long convexities and moulded their gently 

 undulating contours. Moreover, their substance, the 

 material out of which they are carved, is everywhere 

 the same Box Hill and Ditchling Beacon, Dover 

 Cliff and the foundations of Stonehenge, all the same 

 white chalk with its layers of flints washed out and 

 strewn all over the short turf of their slopes. 



And if the Downs have thus a character of their 

 own as elements in the aspect of our Southern England, 

 so also they maintain a flora and, partly dependent 

 on that, a fauna equally characteristic. A volume 

 might be written on the peculiar plants and birds 

 and insects of those long grey sweeps of chalk. Our 

 immediate purpose is to discover something about 

 their beetles. We can attack them anywhere with 

 much the same results, and probably any expedition 

 for such a purpose will involve a short railway journey 

 as a preliminary. Let us assume, then, that we have 

 alighted at such a station as Dorking, or Buckland 

 Hill, in Surrey, or somewhere north of Brighton, 

 or in the vicinity of Salisbury, and found ourselves 

 on one of those white dusty roads that thread the 

 valleys of the chalk country. Our apparatus on such 

 an occasion need only include the sweep net, a few 



2 



