126 Highland Insects. 



moss-grown logs, crashing through, underwood, leaping from 

 boulder to boulder, wading the numerous rapid streams, and 

 always panting up, or slipping down-hill. Unfortunately, also, 

 the inner man will find little indigenous food to sustain the 

 over- taxed powers. Meat is a myth ; milk scant and skim ; 

 eggs are small ami few; so that oatmeal alone is left as a 

 staple. Happy he whose primitive digestion can assimilate it 

 with comfort. The Southron stomach does not take to it 

 kindly as the sole staff of life. Of course, the luxurious traveller 

 can take potted and savoury meats, curious drinks, and other 

 vanities with him ; but the road to Camachgouran is not favour- 

 able to much luggage. Once settled in that village, where 

 some of the hospitable Gaels will, for a nominal consideration, 

 and to their own great personal discomfort, cede half of a two- 

 roomed stone shanty to the visitor, he can, when on the verge 

 of starvation, walk his sixteen miles to Kinloch and back for 

 dinner — a meal to be obtained, in a surprisingly good style 

 (apart from the oatmeal antithesis), at the fishing inn there, 

 under the needle-peak of Schehallion. 



Although my notice has been chiefly directed to the 

 Coleoptera at Rannoch, there are a few conspicuous species of 

 other orders occurring there, to which brief allusion must be 

 made. In the Lepidoptera, butterflies appear to be scarce ; the 

 Alpine forms, in which the continent is so rich, being repre- 

 sented in this country by a very meagre list. Still, such 

 mountain species as we possess are found here, and in abund- 

 ance ; Erebia Gassiope, a sight not often vouchsafed to southern 

 eyes, flitting gaily on the mountain sides, high up, and 

 retreating from observation directly the sun is obscured; 

 Blandma being more common, and Daws swarming on the 

 lower levels. The latter species occurs plentifully on Carring- 

 ton moss, near Manchester, under similar conditions. The gap 

 between the two localities is rather wide, but the subject of 

 geographical distribution, as regards British insects, comprises 

 harder problems than this; a recent puzzle having been 

 afforded by the discovery, in one of the wet ravines at the 

 back of Wimbledon Common, of Stenus Kiesenwetteri, a 

 large and conspicuous species, and which had not long 

 before been described as new to science from specimens found 

 in Spain. 



At Rannoch, also, among the birches, occurs plentifully, at 

 times, the handsome moth known as " The Glory of Kent " 

 (Eudromis versicolor), formerly only taken in the extreme 

 southern counties. This is one of the Bombycidai to which the 

 practice of " sembling " is so fatal; a virgin female being bred 

 and taken into the woods, where she attracts numerous males, 

 who insist upon being caught, as it were; but by what 



