410 Insects. 



silvery hairs ; the antennae have the scape white in front, black be- 

 hind, the remaining segments are rufous, stained behind. Thorax 

 black, with scattered silvery hairs above, more densely clothed be- 

 neath, as well as the coxae and base of the femora; two obscure ru- 

 fous spots on the scutellum, the tegulae and tubercles also rufous ; the 

 wings hyaline, clouded at the tips, inclosing an obscure lunule, the 

 nervures piceous ; anterior and intermediate coxae with a black ring, 

 the posterior pair black ; the anterior and intermediate femora with a 

 minute black spot beneath, the posterior pair black, all the femora 

 and tarsi rufous. Abdomen rufous, black at the base, with two waved 

 cream-coloured lines on the first segment placed laterally, the second 

 has two wedge-shaped white spots, the third two smaller, the rest are 

 very obscurely maculated laterally : the abdomen is immaculate 

 beneath. F. Smith. 



5, High St., Newington, November, 1843. 



Notes on the Habits of Coleoptera. By Henry Walter Bates, Esq. 



Hylobius Abietis. This fine Curculio occurs with us in several of 

 the fir plantations on the hills of Charnwood forest ; my first ac- 

 quaintance with the insect being made in a house in Copt-oak, on a 

 bleak hilly situation, whither I, as well as the beetles, were driven by 

 stress of weather. Stray specimens also have been picked up in the 

 streets of our populous town. 



It is hard to attribute carnivorous propensities to so harmless a 

 wood-eater as Hylobius, yet the vicious habit which Linnaeus noticed 

 — "Ore cutem mordere tentat captivus," is productive of the same de- 

 structive effects ; and I have reason to remember it from the mangled 

 remains of rare Saperdas which I once unconsciously placed in the 

 same phial with the long-beaked gnawing Curculio. They will nib- 

 ble the corks of your bottles to dust, amputate the limbs of your best 

 captures, with now and then a passing grab at one another, and yet 

 call themselves wood-eaters ! 



One of the plantations in which I found Hylobius deserves a pass- 

 ing remark, if only by way of memorial. Its ruinous state teaches a 

 deep entomological lesson. The large trunks of many fine coniferous 

 trees, which once, in assembled stateliness, were as land-marks to the 

 surrounding country, drilled through with the galleries of Rhagium 

 bifasciatum, have fallen to the ground. Curculiones have appropri- 

 ated to themselves the branches. The bark swarms with species of 



