62 



JOURNAL R. A. S. (CEYLON.) [Vol. III. 



from August to October, just after the rains. Nowhere have 

 I seen, nor do I expect to see, such swarms of Cicindelce. 

 Their buzzing flight when disturbed was heard like that of 

 bees. It appeared to me that they did not quit the sands, 

 their favourite haunts, when the tide rose, but allowed them- 

 selves to be covered over by the water, as other semiaquatic 

 beetles do. Without especially hunting for them, I brought 

 away with me some ten species, mostly new, and amongst the 

 rest of the Carabidce as many Bembidia. 



Iu this Island, both in the hills and the plains, there is not 

 a bank of a pond, lake or river, which has not, as in more 

 northern latitudes, its Bembidia, and, contrary to what one 

 would expect, they appear to be more common in the hot 

 low country than in the cool hill region. 



The majority of the species described below may any day 

 be found upon the banks of the Colombo^lake. None of the 

 species, (which, as I said, must have found their way with 

 my collections to Berlin and Stettin, and thence perhaps 

 elsewhere,) have, to my knowledge, been described. The 

 descriptions given below, must, therefore, I am fain to believe, 

 be an interesting addition to the literature of this section of 

 the Carabidce, however inferior they may be to what they 

 might have been had they been produced in Europe had the 

 insects been collated with allied typical species. I have none 

 of those typical representatives of the genus at hand nor is 

 my recollection of them sufficiently distinct to permit of my 

 drawing comparisons between them and the Ceylon insects 

 now before me. Nevertheless, I hope I have set forth 

 the peculiarities of my species with sufficient precision to 

 distinguish them from, or identify them with, any other 

 Cis-Himalayan species that may hereafter be described. As 

 hopeless confusion appears to exist amongst the sub-genera, 

 into which the original genus has been broken up, I have 

 not attempted to refer my species to any of them, for fear 

 of thereby doing anything but throwing additional light on 

 the subject. There is no doubt that many more species 

 exist in this Island, and that indeed, as in the case of the t$ta- 



