106 REVIEWS. 



error has become rather prevalent — at least in the nomenclature and ar- 

 rangement of the stirps, which is the subject of the present Monograph. 

 To this opinion the publication of the present volume is, perhaps, princi- 

 pally owing, as appears from the opening sentences of the preliminary ob- 

 servations : — 



" In consequence of a suggestion made to me by several of my entomological 

 friends and correspondents, I have been induced to undertake, and, at length, to pub- 

 lish, a specific arrangement of the carnivorous ground beetles indigenous to the 

 British Isles — a group to which I have paid much attention. No small amount of 

 confusion appears to have existed in their nomenclature, which has arisen from the 

 circumstance of an undue importance having been assigned to varieties, differing 

 merely in size and colour, which have either been formed into imaginary species, or 

 have been mistaken for others which have never been found in Britain ; the result 

 of which has been that the total amount of actual species has been considerably 

 overrated." 



The value of this word "considerably" may be readily gathered from a 

 comparison of Mr. Dawson's Tabula specierum with the corresponding 

 portion of Stephens's Manual; in the latter of which we find, under " Stirps 

 Geodephaga," 472 (or, deducting 23, included in parentheses, as improperly 

 introduced into the British lists, 449) species, while in Mr. Dawson's list 

 there are only 294 ; in other words, 155 species, or about one-third of 

 the whole, have disappeared. Indeed the difference is still greater ; for of 

 the 294 species admitted by Mr. Dawson, about fifteen are introduced for 

 the first time into the catalogue of the British Geodephaga; so that of 

 Stephens's 449, no less than 170 are rejected by Mr. Dawson. Such a 

 result may well seem startling; but, however much our national vanity may 

 shrink from being thus roughly spoiled of so many of our fancied indi- 

 genous fauna, the sentence of condemnation would seem to have been not 

 lightly pronounced — 



" I have been unwilling," he says, " to reject any reputed indigenous species 

 which I felt that I could reasonably retain, and yet, after full consideration, have 

 been compelled to reduce their aggregate amount very considerably, either because 

 many of them are evidently varieties of others, or because no sufficiently conclusive 

 evidence exists to warrant their retention in the British Fauna. In the subfamily — 

 Bembidides, particularly — I have been compelled to reject about two-fifths as mere 

 varieties or immature examples, which may satisfactorily be resolved into some one 

 or other of the remainder.'' 



Thus, for example, Bembidium obtusum (Tachys obtusus, Steph.) is 

 given as the type of a species, of which Tachys immunis, pusillus, and 

 gracilis, of Stephens, are considered varieties, the distinction between them 

 consisting mainly in different shades of colour in the elytra and legs, attri- 

 butable to greater or less degrees of maturity, and in the greater or less 

 depth of the foveae at the base of the thorax. In the type there are two 

 impressions on the third interstice of the elytra, which seem to be occasion- 

 ally wanting in the varieties ; but the departures from the type are not 



