The Beetles of the Moorlands 



below the middle of the elytra a waved band or fascia 

 of lighter scales, light-grey, light brown, or yellow, 

 sometimes quite evident, sometimes very obscure. The 

 antennae are short and black with a very gradual club, 

 the legs either black, brown or reddish, also short with 

 tibiae broad and flattened; the head and thorax, 

 which, like the elytra, are covered with a variegated 

 pubescence, are closely and very finely punctured, 

 as are the elytra. Were it -not for the antennae the 

 beetle suggests the group Lamdlicornia rather then 

 Clavicornia, at the end of which is its real position, 

 in a small genus of four species. One of these B. 

 pilula, of about the same size, is not uncommon in 

 sandy places, such as rabbit warrens, anywhere in the 

 lowlands ; the other two are smaller and much rarer. 

 They are all covered with a thick down or pubescence 

 of various shades of brown or grey, and variegated 

 with lines and spots, but it is only in B. fasciatus that 

 we see the peculiar waved transverse lighter band 

 right across the elytra, although it must be admitted that 

 this band is not always apparent, and we can take 

 specimens right up to the tops of high mountains 

 which, the scales being entirely rubbed off, are quite 

 black. One characteristic of the genus is that there 

 are grooves on the underside of the thorax and abdomen 

 into which the legs fit when they are retracted, and 

 this makes these beetles so smoothly cylindrical in 

 life, and requires that we keep a Byrrhus when dead 

 a long time in laurel before we attempt to set it. 

 A few more beetles we may pick up from beneath 

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