10 



THE ENTOMOLOGIST S RECORD. 



collect coleoptera, can possibly fairly sample the beetles of any district 

 during such a hurried journey as this was. 



In Part iii of the Transactions, which was issued on November 

 20th, appeared a list of the coleoptera of the Maltese Islands, by Mr. 

 M. Cameron and Mr. A. C. Gatto. The actual list is preceded by a 

 general description of this group of islands, and a few notes on the 

 previous information which has been published in regard to the 

 Maltese coleoptera. Further researches will no doubt add largely to 

 the list the authors have been able to compile. 



The second edition of Hcydcn, Reitter, and Weise's Catalo(jue of 

 the Coleoptera of Europe has this year become available to students ; 

 this thick volume of 750 columns is an immense advance on the first 

 edition of 1891, and is indispensable to every worker in this branch 

 of entomology ; it is not perfect, it is impossible for such a catalogue 

 ever to be free from errors ; I have already mentioned one case in 

 which iwo distinct species have been confused under one specific 

 name, but at any rate it is the high -water mark of our present 

 knowledge of the coleoptera of Europe. 



Three valuable local lists have also appeared — Conmiander 

 Walker's "Oxford List," which gives the names of all the species 

 taken within a seven-mile radius of the centre of Oxford from 1819- 

 1907 ; there are 1399 in the total, with notes as to their habits, etc. 

 The list has been carefully compiled, and the quality of the work is 

 what we always expect from its indefatigable author ; he promises 

 soon to issue a supplement. In connection Avith the " Victoria History 

 of the Counties of England," two lists have been published ; in the 

 Yorkshire volume, there is a list of 1707 species found in the county 

 of broad acres, a total which is bound to be much increased later on, 

 the list is due to Mr. E. S. Bayford and Mr. M. L. Thomson ; and 

 the Devonshire volume contains a list of the coleoptera of the county 

 prepared by Mr. J. H. Keys. 



In my " Retrospect for 1906" {Ent. Bee, vol. xix., p. 38), I briefly 

 alluded to Mr. F. Balfour-Browne's second paper on the aquatic 

 coleoptera and their surroundings in the Norfolk Broads (Transactions 

 of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Societi/, vol. viii., p. 290). I 

 have now had the opportunity of studying this paper, which is as 

 thorough a piece of work as that described in the first paper. The 

 author has modified the method adopted in his first paper for mapping- 

 out the results of his collections, and the curves in this paper supersede 

 those of the previous one. In regard to the question as to whether 

 the Hijdradepliaga are double-brooded, Mr. Balfour- Browne is now 

 inclined to think that the conclusions he came to as the result of the 

 investigations reported in his first paper are wrong, and that all the 

 evidence he has now been able to gather with regard to egg-laying, 

 larvag, and immature imagines points to one cycle only in each year. 

 In regard to the problem he discusses as to what becomes of water- 

 beetles when the home-pond, or dyke, dries up, an observation of my 

 own may be of value. . 1 was collecting in the marshes below 

 Gravesend in September, 1899, after a very hot and dry summer, 

 and came across a perfectly dried-up pond, the bottom of which was 

 covered with dry, caked, and cracked, black mud ; on pulling up some 

 of these dry-looking slabs, I found the underside was moist, and 

 lying between them and the still moist lower mud were hundreds of 



