3068 THe ZooLocist—May, 1872. 
Rhine in rafts. The timber was generally dragged ashore and piled up 
along a low stone wall at the ‘Untere Rheinweg.’ Between the wall and 
the trunks sufficient space was left for a man to get along. Isoon found 
out that the wall thus shaded from the glare of the sun formed a retreat for 
lots of ‘good things’ coleopterologically speaking. Hence I got into the 
habit of inspecting it closely and regularly. One hot afternoon in summer 
I caught sight of a dozing creature I had never seen before; it looked like 
one of the Elateride, and yet there was something uncanny about its facies, 
which did not tally with what I knew of that group. While thus 
speculating, I must involuntarily have breathed on the beetle, because 
suddenly it dropped to the ground and began to shuffle along very rapidly 
in a peculiar jerking and rolling fashion, reminding me vividly of the 
awkward but rapid motion of a Mordella. Then of course I pounced down 
upon it, and once safely in the spirit bottle its palpi and a look at the breast 
showed me that I had captured Serropalpus striatus, the only specimen I 
ever saw alive. Many years afterwards, on the 13th of July, 1869, my 
friend Mr. H. Knecht took another specimen, while crossing the Rhine on 
a ferry a few hundred yards above the spot where mine was captured. The 
path of that ferry is daily crossed by hundreds of pine-rafts. Thus we have 
here two instances of Serropalpus occurring, one at a distance of two feet 
from a pile of fir-timber, and both in the immediate vicinity of the route of 
numerous pine-rafts. I am not aware that other specimens have recently 
been taken at or near Basle; on the other hand I have to state that the 
same friend has informed me since, that in the summer of 1871, Mr. Erne 
took at Mulhouse, in Alsatia, about two hundred examples, but whether 
from growing firs, or dead, decorticated trees, [ am not told. It should, 
however, be stated, that Mulhouse is one of the chief depots of the timber 
trade, and draws its supplies through the canal branching off at Huningnes 
just below Basle. The insect, although usually fir-loving, is, however, not 
confined to resinous trees, as Abbate Guiseppe Stabile took it at Macugnaga 
in Switzerland, off alders (Alnus). Secondly, a word as to how the curious 
blunder ‘ Hellwing’ may have originated in M. Grenier’s ‘ Catalogue.’ Of 
course to turn up an entomological author of the name ‘ Hellwing’ would 
now be almost as interesting as finding some more Serropalpi in a bundle of 
hose at Leicester (Ent. Annual, 1872, p. 76), but we all know that there 
lived once a Pomeranian entomologist, I. Ch. L. Hellwig, who created the 
genus Hallomenus, used among others by Illiger and Panzer, and that this 
genus Hallomenus, of Hellwig, contains even now the next of kin of Serro- 
palpus striatus of Hellenius. When, therefore, a French author meets in 
a German work with a genus Hallomenus, of Hellwig (usually abbreviated 
Hellw.), and next to it he has to place a genus Serropalpus of the Swede 
Hellenius (usually abbreviated Hellen.), surely some allowance may be made 
for the ‘printer's devil.’ It is, however, amusing to see that precisely the 
