Common Beetles of our Countryside 



stream we may be fairly sure that we have got the 

 right species here. 



The other small beetles which come struggling up 

 to the surface belong to a genus of Brachelytra, of which 

 we have so far met with no examples. This is the genus 

 Lesteva, and in fact of the seven species known as 

 British, we may easily take five in such a place as this, 

 the two others, L. fontinalis and L. luctuosa having 

 been found in Devonshire and the Isle of Eigg respect- 

 ively. Lesteva is one of those genera, something 

 like Homalium (see Plate III., Fig. 5) with com- 

 paratively long elytra, which come quite at the end 

 of the Brachelytra. Of the five species which may occur in 

 this wet moss the first, L. longdytrata (the Lesteva with 

 the long elytra) Fig. 7, Plate VI., is fairly common in 

 wet moss anywhere, and may easily be separated from 

 the others by its distinctly longer elytra. Then there 

 is L. heeri (named after Heer, the Swiss coleopterist), 

 also not confined to the mountains ; this species has 

 much shorter elytra than the last, which are also much 

 more deeply punctured than any other of our Lestevce. 



L. sharpi (named after Dr. Sharp, the doyen of 

 British coleopterists), Fig. 9, Plate VI., rather larger 

 and not quite so strongly punctured; L. punctata (the 

 punctured Lesteva), very similar to the last but differing 

 sufficiently in details of structure to be a good species ; 

 and L. pubescens (the hairy Lesteva), Fig. 3, Plate VI., 

 which is the smallest of them all, and has the shortest 

 elytra, very finely punctured, and covered closely with 

 fine hair, complete the list of Lestevce which we might 



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