Another curious example of the effect of local influences (amongst which proximity to the shore plays, in all probability, an important part) on the external aspect of insects exists in the _Aphodius plagiatus_, Linn.,--which in this country is generally deep black. "It is a circumstance worth noticing," I remarked in the 'Zoologist,' in 1846, "that the form which is looked upon by the continental naturalists _as the variety_, is in England evidently the typical one,--for out of about sixty specimens which I captured [at Tenby in South Wales], only _two_ possess the conspicuous red dashes on the elytra which are considered abroad as the almost invariable accompaniment." I have observed the same peculiarity in the flat and damp spots between the sand-hills at Deal, where I have never detected a single individual which is not perfectly dark; and I believe that the greater number of the specimens which were originally taken at Wisbeach, in Cambridgeshire, offered the same geographical characteristics; whilst those which were found near the more inland towns of Peterborough and Norwich present a larger proportion of the ordinary European state. The _blood-red dashes_, however, with which the elytra of numerous insects are adorned, I have constantly remarked possess a singular tendency to become evanescent. It is indeed almost diagnostic of the genus _Gymnaetron_, either that its representatives should be thus ornamented typically, or else that those which are normally black should, _when they vary_, keep in view, as it were, _this principle_ for their wanderers to subscribe to. Thus, I have no doubt that the _G. Veronicae_, Germ., is but a variety of the _G. niger_,--an opinion which I expressed in the 'Zoologist' nine years ago. Whilst commenting on the Coleoptera of Dorsetshire, I then stated, that "for my own part I must confess I should have doubted the _G. Veronicae_ being really distinct from the _G. niger_, for red dashes on the elytra seem naturally peculiar, more or less, to the whole genus; and I should therefore have suspected that, had occasional aberrations from a black type existed (which is not unlikely), those aberrations would probably assume a form which is so common in the other species of the generic group[26]."