»00 WAILES ON THE ENICOCERI. 



some ten or a dozen inches, as their fancy or fate may lead 

 them, on finding a projecting angle of rock large enough to 

 ward off' any rolling stones, or deep and dreary cavern, formed 

 in the surface by the dropping out of a grain or crystal of the 

 sandstone, capable of affording them shelter, they commence 

 the task of building their pigmy huts. In doing so, they 

 agglutinate small particles of the mud which floods usually 

 deposit on coarse stones ; and, when finished, the cases resem- 

 ble very closely, though on a smaller scale, the nests of the 

 mason-bees, sometimes met with on the rough face of a large 

 stone. So numerous are the pupae cases of these little beetles, 

 that they frequently almost cover a half-emerged fragment, 

 giving it a curious appearance, and, until one is aware of their 

 nature, looking like projecting parts of the stone itself. The 

 inclosed inhabitant is of a bright orange colour, and after 

 remaining a period of probably only a few days, it assumes 

 the perfect state, and, patiently waiting till its mandibles are 

 strong enough for the task, gnaws itself a passage, and joins 

 its comrades by the water-side. Here a half dozen of them 

 may often be found in one cranny, spending their brief life- 

 time in sipping the nourishment furnished by the stream at 

 their door. Their travels appear very circumscribed, seldom 

 extending beyond a trip to the extreme edge of the moist 

 portion of the stone on which their lot has been cast, or a 

 ramble for an inch or two below the surface of the water. 

 When, however, an accident, or the indulgence of a roving 

 disposition, compels or tempts them to undertake a voyage of 

 discovery, they are soon thrown by the current into the eddy 

 of some oasis of the watery desert, and slowly, but generally 

 surely, reach the shore. Like the neighbouring genera, the 

 Enicoceri are often covered by the stream with a deposit of 

 mud, and then require the keen and practised eye of the ento- 

 mologist to detect them in their lurking-places. 



George Wailes. 



Netvcustle, November, iS32. 



