i8o THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



Lowlands — harboured Wood-wasps, or not, we shall probably 

 never know. The earliest indication I can find of one 

 occurring in Scotland is the inclusion of Sirex gigas by 

 G. Don in his List of Animals to be found in Forfarshire^ 

 published (as an Appendix to Headrick's View of the Agri- 

 citlture of that county) in 1813. Unfortunately the bare 

 name alone is given without any indication of locality or 

 other circumstances. Writing thirty years later in Jardine's 

 Naturalisfs Library^ James Duncan, who had a fairly exten- 

 sive knowledge of the entomology of Southern Scotland, 

 gives no indication of its occurrence in North Britain. 

 " Sirex gigas" he states, " is rare [as a British species], 

 but it is found occasionally in the more southern counties 

 of England, generally frequenting pine-woods " (vol. xxxiv., 

 p. 313). On 28th October 1862, Robert Gray, the well- 

 known ornithologist, exhibited at a meeting of the Natural 

 History Society of Glasgow a specimen of Sirex juvencus 

 captured in Aberdeenshire during that month.^ The emer- 

 gence of numbers of vS. gigas from wooden props in a coal- 

 pit near Buckhaven, Fife, in 1872, is referred to in the Scottish 

 Naturalist for that year. The wood, it is stated, had come 

 from abroad, and had been in the pit between three and four 

 years. By 1875, the species had been twice captured in the 

 east of Berwickshire ; and by 1887 it is noted by James 

 Hardy as " on the increase, and the perfect insect this year 

 has been seen in several of the Berwickshire plantations, as 

 well as houses." 



In the summer of 1877 a female Sirex^ evidently vS. gigas, 

 was caught at Kinleith Paper Mills, west of Edinburgh, and 

 was exhibited by Dr J. A. Smith at the December meeting 

 of the Royal Physical Society. This constitutes the first 

 record for Midlothian. Curiously enough, I know of no 

 record from East Lothian till 1891, by which date it had 

 evidently established itself in the old fir-wood at Thurston, 

 and no doubt elsewhere. In 1881 a specimen was recorded 

 from Jedburgh, Roxburghshire. 



In October 1883, S. cyaneusi}. have two of the specimens) 



^ References to the records are given in the detailed list of 

 localities, p. 183 et seq. 



