i9or.] 115 



of Oxfordshire, from all available records : by James J. Walkee, Hon. M.A., R.N., 

 F.L.S. : reprinted from the Ashmolean Natural History Society Report for lOOfi. 



This list of beetles includes all those observed by the author during his resi- 

 dence at Oxford since the early part of 1904, supplemented by the captures of 

 Messrs. W. Holland, A. H. Hamm, and J. Collins, of the Hope Department of the 

 Oxford Museum. About 150 species noted by the Eev. F. W. Hope, between 1819 

 and 1822, while he was an undergraduate at Christ Church, have been traced (in- 

 cluding detailed records of the capture of such doubtfully British forms as Necro- 

 phorus germanicus and Platycerus caraboides) and the captures of Prof. Westwood 

 (including Claviger tesfaceus in 1838) have not been overlooked. The area covered 

 is a radius of seven miles from the centre of the city, and altogether 1399 species 

 are enumerated, about 42-5 per cent, of the total number known from the British 

 Islands. The list can be compared with that of the Rochester district, six miles 

 radius, published in 1899, by the same writer, in which 1615 species are recorded. 

 For an inland midland district, Oxford, therefore, compares very favourably, and 

 even there a certain number of forms usually associated with the coast have been 

 found, Harpalus anxius, for instance, being a common insect at Tubney. In a 

 supplementary note at the end of the list various species found in "mole's nests" 

 are added, showing that this method of searching, first tried with success by Dr. 

 Joy, is everywhere profitable.— G. C. C. 



The Victoria Histoet of the Counties of England ; a History of 

 Yorkshire ; Insects : edited by George T. Poeriit, F.L.S., &c. Pp. 80, folio. 

 London : A. Constable & Co., Limited. 1907. 



The section of the " Victoria History " relating to the Entomology of Yorkshire 

 has been entrusted to the editorship of our colleague, Mr. G. T. Porritt. It is thus 

 needless to say that the work has been well executed, especially as regards the 

 Lepidoptera, Neuroptera, and Orthoptera, the orders that chiefly occupy his 

 attention. The list of Lepidoptera in particular, with the full enumeration of 

 localities, and the interesting annotations to nearly every species, appears to us to 

 be quite the best that has yet appeared in the " History," and it is preceded by a 

 concise but lucid and valuable account of the remarkable spread of melanism in 

 Yorkshire moths, which has of late attracted so much attention. In all, 1,384 

 species, or 64'4 per cent, of our entire Lepidopterous fauna, are enumerated as 

 having occurred in Yorkshire; a number probably greater than in any other county 

 of England, and no doubt due not so much to its extent and varied character as to 

 the fact that, from the commencement of the study of our insects, it has always 

 possessed a large and efficient band of hardworking collectors and observers. In 

 the remaining Orders, the Coleoptera, by Messrs. E. G. Bayford and M. Lawson 

 Thompson, shows a good total of 1,707 species, or 52 per cent, of the British 

 beetle-fauna ; the water-beetles of the far-famed Askham Bog, and the wonderful 

 captures by Messrs. Lawson and Wilkinson near Scarborough a generation ago, 

 adding largely to the list of rarities. The lists of the Hymenoptera and Biptera 

 are, on the other hand, very meagre, barely one-seventh of the total number of 

 British species being enumerated in the former Order, and only two species of the 



K 2 



