ENTOMOLOGICAL CABINET. 



SCAPHIDIUM QUADRIMACULATUM. Oliv. 



Black and shining : head punctured : eyes mode- 

 rately large : antennae as long as the head and 

 thorax, with an abrupt club composed of five some- 

 what hemispheric joints : thorax gradually increasing 

 from the head to the elytra, shining and deeply 

 punctured : elytra convex and broadest about the 

 middle, truncate behind and shorter than the abdo- 

 men, which is pointed ; each elytra has a somewhat 

 lunate or irregular red spot at the base and apex, the 

 punctures are deep and are in lines : the legs are of 

 a pitchy brown. 



Length of the body 2 J lines. 



Inhabits fungi and wet rotten wood. 



We have seen this rare insect taken from the 

 stumps of trees at Coombe Wood, Surrey, in the 

 spring of the year ; our specimen we captured many 

 years since, in the stump of an oak rotted by damp, 

 in the New Forest, Hants, and at least eighteen 

 inches from the surface of the earth. The Rev. G. T. 

 Rudd informs us that Scaphidium quadrimaculatum 

 is by no means uncommon near York, and is gen- 

 erally found when the weather is extremely wet, a 

 fact we believe hitherto unnoticed : to our friends in 

 the north we may say that this insect is very rare 

 near London. 



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