240 NOTES ON THE AMAIUE. 



The fishes are the Salmon, which ascends the streams in the breeding season, 

 whence it is seldom permitted to return, the Sea Trout, the Phinnoc, the Com- 

 mon Trout, the Par, the Perch, the Pike, the Eel, the Common Lamprey, the 

 Minnow, the Barbel, and the Stickleback. 



The author of the " General Remarks on the County of Selkirk," in the New 

 Statistical Report, imagines the parish of Selkirk to have been " one large high 

 bed of grey-wacke and clay-slate, now cut by the larger rivers into long-shaped 

 divisions, and cross-cut, by the smaller streams, to a less depth, and into smaller 

 and rounded divisions." He might have extended his theory to Tweeddale, Scot- 

 land, Europe, and the globe ; but in whatever way the counties of Peebles and 

 Selkirk may have been formed, it concerns us more at present to know, that the 

 elevation of their highest summit falls short of 3,000 feet*, and that snow never 

 lies in summer even in their most sheltered hollows. It may therefore be inexpe- 

 dient to apply the epithet alpine either to the hills or to the vegetation of any part 

 of this region, even of the great ridge extending from St. Mary's Loch to Tweed- 

 cross. Among the Grampians, the same elevation would produce a much greater 

 number of species ; but the proximity of higher ground may account in a great 

 measure for the circumstance. The dense sward which clothes the slopes,and the 

 accumulations of peat which cover the summits and ridges of the southern hills, 

 may have suffocated a multitude of species which might still be found there 

 were the surface as bare as that of the granitic or micaceous groups of the north. 



NOTES ON THE AMKRM. 

 By Peter Rylands, Esq. 



(Continued from p. 24.) 

 Species 11. Amara ovata, Stephens. 

 Syn. — A. ovata, Steph. Mandibulata, i. 129; Carabus ovatus, Fabricius. 

 Sp. Char. — Ovate ; with the ant., pal., and legs entirely pitchy-ferruginous ; 

 above brassy ; hd. impunctate ; thx. rather convex, with a deep dorsal 

 channel ; the base unpunctate, with an oblique impressed line on each 

 side ; elyt. green-bronze, slightly convex, striated, the striae impunctate, 

 ' the margin with a continuous series of impressions ; body beneath pitchy- 

 ferruginous. Length 3| lines. 

 I am indebted for the above description to Mr. Stephens, who states that he 

 has only seen one individual of this species, which was captured near London. 



* Broadlaw, in Tweedsmuir, 2,741 ; White Coom, in Moffat, 2,685 ; Hartfell, in Tweedsmuir 



and Moffat, 2,635. 



