28 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



amongst us as a thoroughly good and practical all-round British 

 entomologist. We trust she will still be enabled to spare some 

 of her leisure for the study of insects. 



How far are the common or kitchen cockroaches become 

 naturalised in Britain now ? A lady writes in reference to a 

 remark at p. 298, that she well knows at least three truly rural 

 houses overrun by the beasts. The first, in Gloucestershire, 

 stands some two hundred yards from any other, surrounded by 

 fields, except the front which looks over drive and garden to a 

 large wood with small field between ; village beyond road and 

 drive— quite too far for the insect to travel from the other 

 houses ; village very scattered, of about one thousand very poor 

 souls, pkis farmers. The second house, in the same county, 

 is quite shut off from the village, has an entrance drive and 

 shrubberies, but no house or buildings within one hundred 

 yards. The third house, in Lincolnshire, is opposite the village 

 church, with farm buildings and cottages around it; a population 

 of not over four hundred. No store or warehouse was near any 

 of the three. She suggests the importation in boxes of dry pro- 

 visions from London, though owning none such occurred to her 

 while in a Yorkshire country house ; and we, who get such from 

 the Army and Navy Stores, have no cockroaches in rural Suffolk. 



Canada has given us more than one good lead lately, and 

 we here tender her our sincerest jealousy, upon hearing the 

 announcement that she is about to publish a detailed Catalogue 

 of the whole of her insects. It has been our pet wish, since we 

 began to attack all orders of British insects — not less than 

 twenty years ago, be it softly said — that there were some sort 

 of a geueral guide to the numbers occurring with us. The 

 compilation of such figures is not the easy matter a one-order 

 entomologist may presume. Who, for instance, can yet 

 supplement Denny's obsolete account of the PhilopteridaB or 

 Anoplura; can Theobald yet count the Aphidida3 or Bagnall 

 our Thrips ? This was the principal motive for our compilation 

 of the Chalcididae Catalogue ; and the ProctotrypidaB have been 

 touched only by Chitty since 1873. When working on the 

 Victoria History, we attempted a general conspectus, which 

 was roughly : — 



Coleoptera 3264 



Hemiptera 1233 (computing Anoplura at 211) 



Orthoptera 53 



Neuroptera {s.l.).... 443 



Lepidoptera 2100 (total hard to come at!) 



Hymenoptera 4830 



Diptera 2577 (excl. italics in Ver. List) 



14500 



