COLEOPTERA TAKEN DĂœRING 1970 FROM ARABLE FIELDS AT HAUGHLEY RESEARCH FARMS PAUL T .
HARDING
THE Haughley Research Farms lie on the alkaline clay-loam soils of the flat upland area three miles north of Stowmarket (N.G.R. 62/0.6). They are the location of the Haughley Experiment which started in 1939 when Lady Eve Balfour and the late Alice Debenham founded a trust for the management of New Beils Farm and Walnut Tree Farm to enable a study to be made of the relationships between soil, plants, animals, and man. Special attention was to be paid to the value and success of organic farming. These farms and the Experiment are now administered by the Soil Association (Soil Association 1962). Three farm sections were established in 1939. O R G A N I C (c. 75 acres) a stockbearing section, the fields of which receive only the crop residues and animal manure produced on the section. M I X E D (c. 75 acres), is also a stockbearing section similarly treated with its own crop residues and animal manures, but also with Standard supplementary applications of chemical fertilisers. S T O C K L E S S (c. 32 acres), carries no animals but receives the crop residues it produces together with chemical fertilisers, but no animal manure. A rotational cropping system is employed, which has a ten-year cycle including four years of Ley in the Organic and Mixed sections, and a five-year cycle in the Stockless section. In 1968 a three-year grant was obtained by the Soil Association from T h e Natural Environment Research Council to finance a research project on " T h e Biological Control of Crop Pests" at the Haughley Research Farms. An Entomology Section was set up in March, 1968. Part of the research programme of the Section was sampling by pitfall traps of the rotational crops, and it is from this monitoring trapping and also from a series of soil samples, that the following list is derived. An intensive study was done in 1970 on isolated Cabbage plots in two Bean fields, and the species recorded from these are also listed. Only in 1970 was the complete catch of Coleoptera identified to species, but a list of additional species taken in 1968 and 1969, and from areas other than the rotational crop sampling is included. T h e writer carried out much of the field work in 1970 and species determination was done by him at Monks Wood during the following winter. T h e 1970 records date from the period May to August inclusive. Nomenclature follows Kloet and Hincks (1945).