REVIEWS. 107 



sufficiently important or uniform to justify the author in considering them 

 distinct species. He specifies Tachys gracilis, Steph., as a "smaller exam- 

 ple ;" the dimensions, however, given for T. pusillus are less ; those of T. 

 gracilis corresponding with those of the type. Of the Cicindelidae, of 

 which Mr. Stephens admits six species, one Cic. sylvicola (first described as 

 distinct by Mr. Curtis), is regarded as merely " a green example of C. 

 hybrida ;" so far as it can lay claim to being indigenous to this country, 

 although " the original representative," " is by most entomologists consi- 

 dered a distinct species, and is a larger insect, but not found in Britain." 



Perhaps we may be permitted to doubt whether still further investigation 

 may not lead to the re-admission of some of the species rejected by Mr. 

 Dawson ; at any rate, it will be interesting, and possibly useful, to collect 

 such gleanings of information about any of them as may tend, however 

 slightly, to bring the question of their authenticity to a final issue. With 

 this object in view, we will allude, for a moment, to a species, Nebria pici- 

 cornis, included in a list, at page viii., of the Prel. Obs., as erroneously re- 

 ported British. Mr. Dawson's note on it is as follows : — " Stated to have 

 been captured by the Rev. F. W. Hope, in Longmont Forest. Its natural 

 habitat is on the muddy banks of rivers and lakes, and the locality in 

 which it is reported to have been found is so widely different from those 

 which it naturally affects, that I am inclined to suspect that it has been 

 introduced into the British Fauna by mistake." But we have been in- 

 formed that another specimen, accurately answering to Mr. Stephens's 

 description, and in length between 6^ and 6J lines, was taken by Mr. 

 J. Walter Lea and his brother, in 1847, near Oxford (not an unsuitable 

 locality), and a note to that effect is made against that species in the mar- 

 gin of his copy of Mr. Stephens's Manual. As, however, owing to un- 

 avoidable neglect for a long time, the whole of the collection in which the 

 insect was placed was subsequently destroyed by mites, it is, unhappily, im- 

 possible to subject the specimen to further investigation; so the report must, 

 of course, be taken quantum valeat. But as the locality was the only 

 objection to the reception of the insect on the previous testimony, and as 

 the same difficulty can scarcely apply to this latter instance, it seems, at 

 least, worth mentioning. Curtis says it was "first taken by Dr. Leach, near 

 Ashburton, Devon" 



But it is not only with respect to the number of indigenous species that 

 Mr. Dawson comes before us in the light of a wholesale reformer ; his 

 treatment of the ordinarily received families and genera is scarcely more 

 merciful. Of the six families into which the Geodephaga have been 

 divided, he rejects four (the Brachinidae, Scaritidae, and Harpalidae, of 



