168 COMMON BRITISH INSECTS. 



mark them. The antennae are long, slender, and 

 beset with long hairs, and having a bold three-jointed 

 club. The wings are very long and narrow, and 

 fringed with hairs, a peculiarity which has gained for 

 them the name of Trichopteryx, or 'hairy wings.' 

 Sometimes the wings are undeveloped, but when they 

 are present they are always fringed with hair. There 

 are other characteristics of the family, but these are 

 sufficient for the recognition of any insect that belongs 

 to it. 



In the typical genus, Trichopteryx, the antennae 

 are about half as long as the body, the head is convex, 

 large and triangular, and the wings 

 are furnished at their tips with several 

 bundles of hairs. The present species 

 is one of the largest of the family, and 

 yet it is only one twenty-fourth of an 

 inch in length. Small as it is, by the 

 side of other species of the same 

 genus it is really a giant, most being 

 the thirty-sixth part of an inch in 

 length, while there are some which 



Trichopteryx atomaria , , , i i , i r 1 



are barely one-hundredth of an inch 

 long. Some notion of the size of these tiny creatures 

 may be obtained by looking at the little line on the 

 right hand of the figure, and reflecting that they 

 measure just one quarter of that length. 



The little insect which has been chosen as our 

 example of these ' micro-coleoptera,' as the tiny 

 Beetles are called, is tolerably common, and can be 

 found under heaps of decaying leaf-mould and simi- 

 lar localities. Though the finder may not be able to 



