230 
Annual Report for 1907 of the Zoologist. 
During the year many Members sought advice with regard 
to creatures infesting stored produce and buildings, and though 
this is no doubt accidental and without special significance the 
opportunity has been taken of giving some account of the 
principal insects and arachnids which are likely to be found in 
such situations. 
The Pygmy Mangold Beetle {Atomaria linearis). 
This minute beetle was first recorded as a pest to mangolds 
in England by Miss Ormerod in 1892, though that writer be- 
lieved that many previous failures of mangold crops hitherto 
unaccounted for had in reality been due to the same cause. 
It next attracted attention in 1904, when Mr. F. V. Theobald 
recorded it in the first British Museum Report on Economic 
Zoology, and it has since been reported from 
Buckinghamshire, Devonshire, Huntingdonshire, 
Hampshire, Shropshire, and Somersetshire. In 
May last my attention was called to a bad attack 
in Essex. It would seem, therefore, that the 
pest is either very much on the increase, or that 
the real cause of mangold failure has very often 
remained unrecognised in the past, which, as 
will presently be seen, is extremely likely. In 
either case it is desirable that root growers should 
become more familiar with this insect, possessed 
as it is of great destructive powers. 
Its very small size (it is about one-sixteenth 
of an inch in length) and its nocturnal habits 
render it very likely to be overlooked by the 
farmer, who on visiting the crop by day sees 
nothing to account for its failure, and if he sends 
specimens of the injured plants to an entom- 
ologist, none of the beetles are included in the 
sample, or they escape before examination, so 
that it is extremely probable many cases of 
this attack have been attributed to wire-worm 
or millipede. Such mistakes are not likely to 
occur in the future now that it is known that the 
insect is widely distributed and the distinctive 
goi”pia^.^^' characters of its work are sufficiently familiar to 
at once suggest the real cause of injury. 
Nature of the injury . — The beetle appears in May and June, 
and attacks the germinating mangold seed, and more or less 
destroys the crop before it comes above ground at all. Such 
plants as succeed in putting forth seed-leaves are attacked in 
two ways. The beetles bite holes in the seed-leaves, but 
they inflict much more serious injury on the root, the places 
