62 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



I collected in the Broadford district, and I commented in my 

 paper on its absence from Coll. In spite of its being a 

 northern species it is obviously very rare in these western 

 islands, although there is plenty of what appears to be suitable 

 ground for it. 



I searched in vain for OctJiebius leJoHsiz, Rey and Muls, 

 and I think that at any rate the northern island of the Outer 

 Hebrides is beyond its range. In my paper on the North 

 Ebudes I mentioned that it was very difficult to find on Eigg, 

 and that it was also very scarce at Mallaig (W. Inverness) ; 

 I now much regret that I had not an opportunity on that 

 occasion of searching for it on Sk}'e. On my way to Lewis 

 I examined some of the small rock-pools at Kyle of 

 Lochalsh, where we were kept waiting for the mails for an 

 hour and a half; but the species was not to be found there, so 

 that it seems probable that the limit of its range northward 

 is somewhere about Eigg. 



Although Lewis seems to be beyond the range of this 

 species it is not beyond the range of Paracymus nigroceneus, 

 another southern species which, however, only occurred in two 

 collections, although several specimens were found. It will 

 be interesting to see whether it ranges farther north in the 

 west of Scotland, and whether it may even be found in the 

 Orkneys and Shetlands. 



I went to Lewis fully expecting to find Dytiscus 

 lapponicns^ and I even expected to find it at much lower 

 levels than in Eigg and southern Skye. Deronectes griseo- 

 striatiis, confined to lochs at high elevation in other places 

 I have worked, occurred not uncommonly in low-level lochs 

 in Lewis ; but neither in low nor in high lochs did the 

 Dytiscus occur, in spite of the fact that some of the lochans 

 looked as if they were ideal situations for it. Of course, 

 failure to discover a species is not proof that it does not 

 occur ; but I think it is really absent from Harris and Lewis, 

 and that its absence is associated with the absence of newts 

 and toads, which, so far as my experience goes, do not occur 

 there. Gammarus, the fresh- water shrimp which swarmed 

 in some of the lochans in which lapponiais occurred in Skye 

 and Eigg, is present in many of the lochans of Lewis and 



