_D. vulpinus_ is slightly larger; has the same elongate form; is black, with the dorsal surface covered with short brown hairs, and the under surface with more buff coloured pubescence. Both these species have a very wide range, and can be found under dead animals in the bush, in sheepskins, bacon, &c., and I have even taken larvae in bags of grain. Under favourable conditions these beetles increase in countless numbers; quite recently, Mrs. Black, writing from N. Queensland, says that toward the end of the drought when the country was covered with bones and dead stock, whenever the station hands camped to eat their dinners, these beetles would swarm out in thousands from under logs and stones to pick up the bits of food scattered about. Gilbert in Gould’s “Birds of Australia,” records a similar instance on the Hautmann’s-Abrolhos Islands off the coast of W. Australia, a great nesting place for the Noddy Tern, where immense numbers of the young birds are killed by the lizards, which only eat the brain and marrow. The remains cumbering the ground were food for _Dermestes lardarius_, which swarm over the islands in immense numbers. This is the common European Bacon Beetle, and is listed in Masters’ Catalogue as found in Australia, but I have never seen an Australian specimen of this very distinct beetle, and think Gilbert may have mistaken the species. The members of the Genus _Trogoderma_ are small, broad, and rather flattened black beetles, generally found under bark on tree trunks in the dead pupae of moths upon which they feed. _Trogoderma froggatti_ is short and broad; it measures under ⅙ of an inch; is a shining black beetle, with the elytra clothed with dark scattered hairs; it was bred from larvae taken close to Sydney. _T. apicipenne_ is slightly larger, and darker black, very thickly clothed with black hairs; a dull red blotch on either side of the apical half of the elytra gives it a very distinctive character. These beetles and their hairy larvae feed upon the remains of dead caterpillars under the dead bark, pupae and other organic matter. The _Anthrenus_ are known as “Museum beetles,” for they are the greatest pests that curators of Museums have to deal with; their small hairy larvae attack every kind of specimen, and are most destructive to pinned insect collections, though the adult beetles are generally found in the gardens frequenting flowers.