LOCAL DISTRIBUTION OF INSECTS. 499 
shores, and the sea-wrack that is cast up upon them; the 
estuaries that receive its tides; the brackish waters and 
saline marshes in its vicinity. All the above places, when 
opportunity serves, the Entomologist should explore, for 
in almost all he will find peculiar kinds of insects. 
As mountains and hills have usually their own Flora, 
the insects appropriated to alpine plants can only be met 
with where the pabulum is found. Here also those north- 
ern insects that are impatient of a warmer climate will 
take their station, if they migrate to the southward®. 
The predaceous beetles likewise sometimes frequent a 
mountainous district. Carabus glabratus was first taken 
by Professor Hooker on Ingleborough; and probably, 
if the Welsh and Scotch mountains were duly investi- 
gated by an Entomologist, many novelties would reward 
his toils. The valleys and plains, especially those of a 
sunny exposition, abound in insects. When the heat of 
the atmosphere indisposes you for motion, you will find 
it no unprofitable or unpleasant employment, lying on 
the grass, to search for minute beetles, which you will 
there find coursing about amongst the tufts and roots of 
the herbage. Thus you may procure many of the Pse- 
laphide, which you would not otherwise meet with. Even 
when the grass is grown up, insects are fond of alighting 
upon its spikes, and thence drop or run to the ground. 
Should circumstances ever carry you abroad to the 
steppes or grassy plains of Tartary, or to Hungary, you 
would find there two or three species of the singular ge- 
nus Lethrus, which burrows in the soil. Every hole is 
inhabited by a male and female ;—from it they issue to 
2 See above, p. 484. 
2K2 
