The Odonata of the Forth Area. 87 



XIII. The Odonata (Dragon-flies) of the Forth Area. By 

 William Evans, F.E.S.E. 



(Read 27th March 1905.) 



The present paper is another of the series on the fauna 

 of the Edinburgh, or "Forth" area, which I have during 

 the past sixteen years been submitting to the Society. The 

 group now dealt with is a small one, and, I am sorry to say, 

 poorly represented in the district. Nevertheless, it is an 

 exceedingly interesting group, comprising as it does some 

 of the finest insects to be found in this country, while all 

 its members are sufficiently striking to attract attention. 

 The Odonata, although usually included in that very varied 

 assemblage of insects known as the Linnean order Neurop- 

 tera, are so marked off by distinctive characters that they 

 stand quite alone, and will doubtless, in time, be generally 

 granted full ordinal rank. The publication in 1900 of Mr 

 W. J. Lucas's beautifully illustrated volume on the British 

 Dragon-flies (7) has given a fresh impetus to the investigation 

 of their distribution. 



There are very few published records of Odonata for this 

 area, and these are mostly old and of comparatively little 

 value. The celebrated Belgian authority on the group, 

 Baron Edm. de Selys Longchamps, visited Scotland in 

 1845, and evidently examined specimens in the collections, 

 among others, of Dr Greville and James Wilson of Edin- 

 burgh, but in his " Kevision " (5) and " Eevue " (6) he 

 seldom indicates any more precise locality than " Scotland " 

 (c/. Note by K. J. Morton in Ent Mo, Mag., 1900, p. 108). 

 Specimens, as we know, were not so carefully labelled with 

 locality and date then as they are now, but De Selys' 

 statements would seem to indicate the former existence in 

 Scotland of species now apparently absent. In giving my 

 own lists of localities in considerable detail, I have in view 

 the interest the information may have to future workers. 

 It is easy to see that restriction — and consequent decrease — 

 rather than expansion of range is likely to be the fate of 

 some of the species as time goes on. 



Of the forty or so British Odonata, scarcely one-half 



