60 



already mentioned are sufficient to verify my observa- 

 tions, of the extreme liability to change which, more or 

 less, most insects possess when placed within the imme- 

 diate influence of the sea. How to account for it, I 

 know not. I mention it as a mere fact, and leave it for 

 others to assign a reason for its existence*"." 



Apparently dependent, in a large measure, on the 

 same circumstance (namely proximity to the coast), the 

 Bembidium saxatile, Gyll., so common at the edges of 

 the mountain streams in the north of England, in Scot- 

 land, and throughout a portion of Ireland, presents itself 

 along our southern shores in the form of a permanent 

 variety ; being, as the Rev. J. F. Dawson remarks, "more 

 depressed, never narrower in front (the sides therefore 

 more parallel), whilst the colour is always much paler 

 and the spots larger, that before the apex being round 

 and very conspicuous, and the anterior one occasionally 

 expanding over the surface very considerably f." I have 

 taken it in profusion on the coasts of the Isle of Wight, 

 Dorsetshire, and Devon. And so with the Cistela sul- 

 phurea, Linn., which in certain maritime localities (as I 

 have particularly noticed on the sand-hills at Deal) is 

 liable to become so dark in colouring, that, without the 

 intermediate shades to judge from (which however may 

 usually be obtained in situ), it might stand a fair chance, 

 occasionally, of being mistaken for a separate species. 

 A Psylliodes in Lundy Island, allied to (if not identical 



* Zoologist, iv. pp. 1283, 1284. 



t Geodephaga Britannica (London, 1854), p. 186. 



