134 Highland Insects. 



derm is constructed causes its burrowing operations to appear 

 the more wonderful. In the male, usually much darker than 

 the other sex, the maxillary palpi are of great size, assuming 

 the appearance of a fan, on account of the third joint (which is 

 much developed) having numerous bronchial appendages. 



The southern naturalist can hardly fail to be struck by the 

 great prevalence of certain conspicuous species of Elateridce, 

 or " skip-jacks," — a family with which he cannot make much 

 acquaintance in his own district. Here many of them abound, 

 and they are often of large size and bright colours, from the 

 very rare banded and lovely Atlious undulatus to the shining 

 black Elater nigrinus, beaten off birches ; the very stones on 

 the sandy shores of the loch covering little families of the 

 jerking Gryptohypnus. Their long, vermiform larvae abound 

 in rotten wood ; and some bright shining Oteniceri, with 

 strongly-serrated antennae in the male, fly about in the hot 

 sunshine, often settling on timber with a metallic clang. The 

 females of these are more sedentary and much rarer, occurring 

 amder stones, etc., and having the antennas much smaller and 

 more simple. 



Of the Phytophaga, so abundant in the south, perhaps the 

 most abundant of the few species to be seen is (at its proper 

 season, and in its right locality) a most beautiful and variable 

 species of Gryptocephalus (first discovered here in Great 

 Britain in 1865), the 10-p>unctatus of Linnasus ; which, in its 

 normal form, is clear yellow, with black spots — the male being 

 darker and banded — and both sexes ' c sporting " into a deep 

 black variety ( bothnicus, Linn.) . This elegant creature defies 

 the net, and has to be absolutely " stalked " in its native 

 dwarf sallow beds ; it drops hopelessly into the wet moss if a 

 shadow fall on it, and in the hot sunshine flies as readily as 

 the common green Tiger-beetle (Cicindela campestris) , which 

 abounds in the hot paths. Of the latter a black form occurs, 

 but exceedingly rarely ; dark forms, also, are to be found of 

 many bright insects (a circumstance often observed in marshy 

 places), so glistening and coppery a species as Anchomenus 

 ericeti being here taken of a dull, deep black colour. 



Want of space prevents me from entering upon the nu- 

 merous fungus-feeders abounding here, from the gregarious 

 and minute species of Cis to the large Cassidiform Tliymalns 

 — also found in the New Forest ; or upon the many Copro- 

 phagous Lamellicorns, or the very numerous species of Bra- 

 chelytra or Staphylinidce (of which Scotland is the metropolis), 

 from the lustrous but rapacious bandit Qucedius Icevigatus under 

 bark (whose crooked yellow pupa) are often to be seen) to the 

 many Tacliini, living in stercorc — insects of an apparently 

 puzzling uniformity, but a close observation of whose diversely 



