SHARP: HYDRADEPHAGA OF LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE. 197 
is no bright or metallic coloration throughout the entire group, except 
indeed in the case of Gyrinus, but these beetles, as we have said, 
keep on the top of the water, and depend more for safety on the 
agility and speed with which they turn and double and dive, than in 
any protective resemblance. All the others range from a sort of 
fulvous yellow, through shades of brown and olive-green, to black ; 
and the spots with which so many are adorned, are so arranged as to 
appear like the spots and flecks of light among the weeds wherein | 
their life is spent. The larve of the Hydradephaga may often be 
dredged up among caddis-cases, shells, aquatic hemiptera, and the like. 
They are ferocious monsters, more insatiable even than the perfect 
insects, and armed with enormous jaws in most species. Of the pupz 
and methods of pupation, as is usual among the Coleoptera, next to 
‘nothing is known. 
DISTRIBUTION. 
And now as regards the distribution of these insects in our own 
district, that is, the counties of Lancashire and Cheshire. It should 
be said in preface that the following remarks apply almost exclusively 
to the Western part of those counties. We have only one observer 
in Mid Lancashire, but none to whose records I have been able to 
gain access in either South Cheshire or North or extreme East 
Lancashire. Thus a great deal of our district remains still unexplored, 
localities which from their character are likely to add considerably 
to our local list ; such, for instance, are the meres and mosses which 
Stud the Southern division of Cheshire, and the mountains, tarns, 
and marshes of Furness in the North of Lancashire. 
In compiling a list of records Dr. Ellis, of Liverpool, has done 
more in this, as in the other divisions of Coleoptera, than all the 
other observers put together ; but we must also mention the name of 
the late Mr. Kinder, of Bootle, who seems to have worked the pits 
and ponds in his immediate vicinity with singular thoroughness. 
We have also—besides the records of Mr. Chappell, which cover 
more especially the district around Manchester—the observations of 
Mr. Wilding and Mr. Stott in Lancashire, and Mr. Newstead and 
Mr. Tomlin in Cheshire, and from the recorded observations of these 
gentlemen we have been able to compile a fairly full list of the local 
Hydradephaga. 
Beginning then with the family HauirLtpa&, those crawling more 
than swimming beetles of the water. As you will see from the table, 
there are three genera: Brychus, Haliplus, and Cnemidotus. The 
first and the last of these genera have one species each, and both are 
said to occur in the East Cheshire district, but we have no records 
from the immediate vicinity of Liverpool. 
July 892. 
