Common Beetles of our Countryside 



the confusion, the strife, and the labour of the every- 

 day world of men, high amid the solitude of the 

 eternal hills, the only sound in our ears the musical 

 rush and falling of water down its rock bound channel, 

 stretched coatless on the short warm turf with arm 

 submerged to the shoulder in the cool clear water to 

 pick out the beetles, as one by one they come floating 

 and struggling to the surface, or clinging like ship- 

 wrecked mariners to some minute fragment of detached 

 moss, most of them such as we should never meet 

 with anywhere else. They will be all members of 

 the sub-group Brachelytra. First there is a species 

 which reminds one of a Stenu* (Plate III., Fig. n), 

 but it is larger than any Stenus we have yet seen ; 

 in fact, it belongs to another genus and is named 

 Didnous carulescens (the blue Dianous) Fig. 12, Plate 

 VI. It has the thin pointed body, the long legs, rather 

 short antennae, long palpi and very protuberent eyes of 

 a Stenus, but its size is nearly 6 mm. long, and its 

 colour a steel blue with a large orange-coloured spot on 

 each elytra. As there is no British Stenus in the slightest 

 degree blue in colour this is an insect easily recognized. 

 The next may probably be one of the real 

 Steni, Stenus guyncmeri (named after one of the old 

 continental coleopterists), Fig. 6, Plate VI., not more 

 than 5 mm. long, quite black and rather shining. It may 

 be known from all the other members of the genus by 

 the exceedingly coarsely punctured and irregular , almost 

 crumpled-looking, surface of the thorax and elytra, 

 and the legs, of which the first half of the femora (thighs) 



