CO 
MANGOLD. 
eaten by the insects, the greater number had been wholly eaten away, 
excepting the stems of the leaves. 
The specimens forwarded proved to be of the Beet-Carrion Beetle, 
the Silpha opaca, Linn., the grubs of which have been recorded as doing 
great harm in France to Beet or Mangolds; and injury was caused 
many years ago to Mangolds in Londonderry and Tyrone, by the grub 
Silpha opaca. 
1 and 2, young and full-grown larvae; 3 and 4, larvae, magnified ; 5, female 
beetle flying ; 6, male beetle, slightly magnified. 
either of this beetle or one of the same nature indistinguishable from 
it. But, though this species (S. opaca ) is common in England, it has 
not yet, as far as I am aware, been observed here as a crop-pest, and 
up to 1859 was stated by John Curtis “ to be unknown on this side the 
water as an enemy to agriculturists.” 
This beetle takes its double name from the circumstance that its 
grub will feed on Beet or Mangold leaves, as well as on putrid animal 
matter, as dead animals, garbage, and the like, in which the beetle is 
commonly found.* 
At present it seems uncertain how many species or varieties of 
these “ Carrion ” Beetles ( Silphas ) feed at times in the grub-state on 
Mangold-Beet leafage. There are certainly two kinds that do so : 
the brownish and somewhat downy S. opaca, Linn, (figured), and the 
black shiny species, the 8. atrata, Linn. The grubs of the Beet- 
Carrion Beetle (also figured) are, when full-grown, much the shape of 
wood-lice, and furnished with horny jaws and three pairs of short- 
* Silpha opaca of Linmeus, S. tomentosa of DeGeer (see Curtis’s ‘ Farm Insects,’ 
p. 392. The local varieties of the S. atrata, L., are given as cassidea, Dahl., in the 
Banat; fusca, Herbst, in Germany; pedemontana, Fab., in Italy; punctata , Herbst, 
Alps; subrotundata, Steph., in England (see Calwer’s ‘Kaferbuch,’ p. 97). In 
‘ Handbook of Beetles of Great Britain and Ireland,’ by H. E. Cox, vol. i., pp. 409, 
410, I find the S. subrotundata above mentioned given as a variety of S. atrata, and 
thus, pursuing the subject, get round to this kind and variety being the same as the 
Phosphuga atrata and P. subrotundata of Stephens, of which that writer says the 
former “ hybernate beneath mosses, dead leaves, and stones, and are often plentiful 
in summer on sand-hills near Swansea ; and the second is rare in Britain, but more 
abundant in Ireland.” 
