Insects. 



6387 



Carpophilus flexuosus, an insect belonging to the family Niti- 

 dulidae, is constantly found in drums of figs, &c. : this species 

 appears to have spread over most parts of the world ; specimens have 

 beeu received from North and South Europe, North and South 

 America, India and the Fedjee Islands: this insect 1 have taken 

 at large in this country, at Colney Hatch and in Plumstead Wood; I 

 also found it in a fir plantation on the border of Hawley Flat, Hants. 

 Those well-known and universally distributed species, Necrobia rufi- 

 collis and rufipes, Ptinus hololeucus, Anobium paniceum, Stene 

 ferruginea and Alphitobius picipes, with, no doubt, a host of other 

 species, which a Coleopterist would be able to catalogue, are now by 

 pretty general consent enrolled in the ranks of British beetles. 



I now come to the more immediate purport of this communication ; 

 supposing a species to be undoubtedly imported, but which, un- 

 influenced prejudicially by change of climate, continues to multiply 

 its kind, until by degrees it spreads itself in all directions, and 

 becomes generally known, and its extermination impossible, — at what 

 precise point of time are we justified in naturalizing the insect? I 

 remember at a meeting of the Entomological Society, some twenty 

 years ago, the Ptinus hololeucus being exhibited as a novelty ; this 

 species is now, I believe, generally incorporated with the British 

 Ptinidae. About the same time, 1838, a notice on a minute species 

 of ant which had become so numerous in dwelling-houses that it 

 proved an intolerable nuisance, so much so, that houses were deserted 

 in consequence. I may be allowed here to quote a few observations 

 from my Catalogue of Formicida3. The ant in question, named 

 Myrmica domestica, by Mr. Shuckard, " has been admitted into the lists 

 of British ants, but is undoubtedly an importation. The Rev. Hamlet 

 Clark brought a number of specimens of this ant from Constantia, in 

 Brazil ; these have been carefully examined, and proved to be identi- 

 cal with Shuckard's species. The Myrmica molesta of Say, I consider 

 identical with our insect, specimens from the United States having 

 been carefully compared : it is described as being equally abundant 

 and annoying in houses in that country, and is probably now 

 of almost universal occurrence, like other insects which attach them- 

 selves to the habitations of man ; South America is, in all probability, 

 its native country." 



Myrmica laevigata : I described this species with a suspicion of its 

 being identical with the M. pallidula of Nylander, and, on a compa- 

 rison of specimens of the small workers only, I did not detect 

 differences which presented themselves when a series of all the sexes 



