504 LOCAL DISTRIBUTION OF INSECTS. 
are properly chalk insects ; but they fall into these pits, 
where they are readily discerned, from the contrast of 
their colours with the whiteness of the chalk. By watch- 
ing attentively the bottom of one, vast numbers in a warm 
day may be taken when they fall or are climbing up- 
wards. Ofall soils clay offers the fewest inducements to 
the Entomologist, who will lose both his time and labour 
in a clay-pit; while in one of sand, chalk, or marl they 
will usually not be mispent. Vegetable earth also affords 
a harbour to various larvee, and the pupze of many night- 
fliers amongst the Lepidoptera, by digging in it, espe- 
cially under trees, may be obtained. Even the bare rocks. 
have their insect frequenters that take shelter in their fis- 
sures; and in the early part of your career especially you 
should always turn over large stones, as beneath them 
many of the Harpalide and other Eupodina frequently 
lie hid: and in this situation, both in Suffolk and Sussex, 
Lomechusa emarginata, one of our scarcest Brachelytra 
Latr., has been taken. Old trees also, and planks that 
have laid long without being moved, often afford a shelter 
to many of the minute Coleoptera; as Pselaphida, Aleo- 
charide, Cryptophagide, Scymnide, &c. Live fences, 
especially when the hawthorn is in blossom, and where 
trees are also intermixed, are attended by innumerable 
insects of almost every description; and even the black- 
thorn will present you with one of our most splendid 
weevils (Rhynchites Bacchus). Dead fences are almost 
as fertile in insects as living ones. In gates, posts, rails, 
and other ¢zmber when felled, the timber-devouring 
tribes take their station:—between the bark and the 
wood are the Bostricide; in the wood itself, the Ano- 
bide and the Capricorn beetles. Here also you may meet 
