Common Beetles of our Countryside 



none of them is in any sense specially a mountain beetle. 

 Wheresoever the carcase is, whether on seashore, or 

 lowland pasture, or mountain side, there should we find 

 these and some few other carrion beetles ; but as a matter 

 of ordinary experience the dead bodies of birds or beasts 

 are more likely to remain unnoticed and unburied on 

 some sequestered mountain slope than they are on the 

 paths and meadows of the valley farms, and unless such 

 corpses have lain undisturbed for some time we are not 

 likely to find them tenanted by many beetles. 



For when we dropped below the 2,000 feet level we 

 left most of the genuine mountain beetle fauna behind 

 us, and the remainder of our journey back to our base 

 will differ but little from our expedition across the moors. 

 We may therefore conclude by reminding such of our 

 strenuous young students of British beetles to whom the 

 opportunity of their ascent is given, that every mountain 

 peak has to some extent its own insect fauna, that, 

 especially in Ireland and Scotland, by far the larger 

 number of these mountain peaks remain virtually 

 unexplored, and that the existence of beetles new to 

 our British list, perhaps even to science, waiting to be 

 won in these virgin fastnesses, if not a probable 

 contingency is at least quite within the limits of 

 the possible. 



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