Trechus Nigrocruciatus

Thomas Vernon Wollaston published this drawing in his book ‘Insecta Maderensia’ in 1854. In the book he thanks Westwood for providing the illustrations, ‘Particularly, however, would I draw attention to the valuable help which I have received from J. O. Westwood, Esq., whose pencil has been so elaborately employed in the figures which I am thus enabled to attach, and by whom many of the minutest of the dissections were accomplished, — with a degree of delicacy, moreover, to which I did not myself at the commencement of this Work (though I have since succeeded in anatomizing the larger portion of them, likewise) lay claim.’

47. Trechus nigrocruciatus, Woll. (Tab. II. fig. l.). Wollaston wrote the following about this species:

‘A most elegant species, and apparently one of the rarest of all the Madeiran Coleoptera. [...] It occurs only at very lofty elevations, its range being the upper limits of the sylvan districts, and extending perhaps from about 4500 to 5000 feet above the sea. It is found beneath dead rotting leaves in the vicinity of the springs and small trickling streams ; under which circumstances I captured it at the Cruzinhas, during my encampment there in July 1850, as also at the extreme head of the Ribeiro Fundo,—on the northern edge of the Fanal.’