THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 43 
of the Calden, twenty miles away from Silloth, may also be 
noted; and another still was taken by my father to the late 
Mr. Heysham to name; but many insects never came back 
again,—I can trace four or five specimens. I may further 
add my father and brother, who went back with Mr. Rothwell 
to see if any more could be got, still live, and the writer was 
there, too, and saw the last specimen carried away with the 
wind and lost to view. Now here we have a vast deal more 
evidence than many species which pass muster on the faith 
of a specimen or two.—J. B. Hodgkinson ; 15, Spring Bank, 
Preston, October 10, 1874. 
Answer to Correspondent. 
James Ashby.— Beetles in Tea.—I send herewith some 
beetles and two or three maggots found in some chests of tea. 
The entire parcel of a hundred chests, or so, is more or less 
affected. Although the specimens I send you are dead, there 
are plenty of living ones to be found. The tea has been in 
the bonded warehouse three or four years. Do you think the 
insects have got into the tea since its arrival in this country, 
or were they imported with it? The tea is very common, 
in fact, rubbish, which no respectable dealer would buy, 
and it will probably be destroyed or exported; therefore 
the lovers of “the cup that cheers, but does not inebriate,” 
need not be in fear of having a decoction of beetles. 
[These beetles are perfectly familiar to entomologists, and 
are generally known by the name of Niptus hololeucus. In 
the year 1838 I found them abundantly in an old cupboard, 
at Deptford, in company with sundry and divers boots and 
shoes that had been laid aside as leaky, and therefore useless. 
Not knowing the insect, and being desirous of obtaining its 
name, I took a sample set to the late J. F. Stephens, then the 
highest authority on beetles, and a gentleman who devoted 
every Wednesday evening to the enlightenment of his less- 
informed brethren of the net and beating-stick. Finding it 
unknown to Mr. Stephens I wrote a paper on my discovery, 
and read the same at a meeting of the Entomological Club, 
held at the late Mr. Walton’s, calling my new insect Ptinus 
holosericeus. This paper was never published, and had it 
