Insects. 2109 



the branch caused it to be dislodged, I infer that it feeds on the lichens. I have occa- 

 sionally met with it in similar situations at Southwood, Highgate. 



Ctenicerus sanguinicollis . I dug two specimens (males) from loam, at the foot of 

 an oak at Snaresbrook, in April last : the tree at whose base these specimens occurred 

 had been wounded, and the soil beneath was saturated with the discharged sap, and 

 contained numerous wireworms, probably larvae of the present species. I obtained a 

 fine specimen of the female of this species in June last, by sweeping herbage on a bank 

 facing the river at Southend. 



Tetratoma ancora. Of this variable species I have, during the last four years, cap- 

 tured nearly as many dozen specimens at Colney-hatch : it is a wood-feeder, and in- 

 habits the rotten stumps of branches which have either been lopped off within an inch 

 or two of the trunk or fallen from decay ; on splitting these the insect is found con- 

 cealed in its burrow after the fashion of an ^.nobium, e.g. A. castaneum. I feel 

 satisfied that dead wood is its nidus, having always (with the exception shortly men- 

 tioned) taken it in this substance. It is possible that violent gales or other circum- 

 stances may occasionally rupture the branches in which it lives, and, dislodging the 

 insect from its abode, it may seek a temporary asylum in moss. I have long been a 

 collector of moss, and have only on one occasion (a day or two subsequent to the trees 

 it inhabits having undergone lopping and trimming) met with the insect in such a si- 

 tuation. This species is found from the commencement of December to the end of 

 May. I have taken it from the oak and hornbeam, but have not yet succeeded in 

 rearing it from what I presume to be its larva. 



Tetratoma Desmaretsii. I had first the pleasure of taking this conspicuous species 

 in the month of October, 1845, at which time I supplied the cabinets of Messrs. Wa- 

 terhouse, Wollaston, Stevens and Smith, with specimens : notwithstanding repeated 

 and fruitless search in the works of continental entomologists for a description agree- 

 ing with the species under consideration, the knowledge that there existed many books 

 to which I had not yet been able to gain access gave rise to the fear that it might 

 have been already described, and deterred me from announcing it as new and assign- 

 ing it a name which should hereafter be sunk as a synonyme, and I preferred the risk 

 of sacrificing that eclat which many (judging from their precipitate descriptions of 

 supposed new insects) appear to think attends the discovery of an unrecorded species, 

 to the stigma which, in my opinion, is attached to those who bestow a name on a con- 

 spicuous species previously described in a well-known work treating of the order to which 

 the said species appertains. At the latter end of the past year, chancing to fall in with 

 a copy of Latreille's ' Genera Crustaceorum et Insectorum,' I at once recognized the 

 T. Desmaretsii of that work as the insect I had taken at Henhault. I showed speci- 

 mens to that accomplished entomologist, Dr. Schaum, then in London, who fully 

 concurred with me that it was the species thus designated by Latreille, observing that 

 he had seen the specimen which I had sent to Mr. Wollaston, and that it was of very 

 rare occurrence on the Continent, which latter remark is fully borne out by Latreille, 

 who says, " once observed in the month of December, in a Boletus on an oak, in the 

 Bois-de-Boulogne, Paris." 



As above stated, I first met with this insect in the month of October, 1845. I beat 

 nine specimens from a partially-decayed oak-bough in Henhault forest : on visiting 

 the same tree, on the 26th of September of last year, I again succeeded in capturing 

 upwards of a dozen specimens : although on each occasion I devoted several hours 

 to searching for the insect in similar situations in the neighbourhood, I was unsuc* 

 VI X 



