194 



THE BRITISH NATURALIST. [October 



can be nothing else than B. fasciatus. Such it proved to be and made 

 the first capture of a new species. 



All this time we had been gradually ascending, pausing where the 

 fallen stones lay thick under the steeper declivities, up by devious 

 slopes ever higher, till where the gorse grows thicker , and in hard 

 rounded knobs, and the first tufts of heather appear. We are now 

 above the last grey farm-house with its two or three encompassing 

 ash trees bent and gnarled, above the last little rough enclosure where 

 the lambing ewes are congregated. Nothing beyond us now but 

 brown heather and the great peak clear cut against the blue. A 

 mountain track ciosses the pass here and winds down across miles 

 of desolate moorland to the hamlet in the valley on the other side. 

 Close by, the vivid sphagnum shows the natural line of drainage and 

 the recent presence of water, and turning up a stone half buried in the 

 ooze, we pick up a dusky Hydropoms. It is H. fevvugineus, that we can 

 distinguish at once. This is rather a difficult genus, especially the 

 black species, but this member of it is of a very broad short build and 

 bears peculiar and unmistakable light markings on its elytra. It is a 

 good beetle and is at once consigned to a special bottle. It was, 

 indeed, all we found there. Later on we should obtain from -this wet 

 moss lots of interesting species, Quedius aiwicomus, Dianous candescens, 

 Stenus Guynemen, Lesteva pubescens, and Euthia palustris ; but it is too 

 early yet for any of these, so we cross the road and plunge again into 

 the heather, here almost waist deep. As we struggle through it, a 

 sharp broken cackle, and away go the grouse now paired for the 

 season, we can see their rufous heather coloured backs far down the 

 valley as they skim away on rigid wing. Tetmo scoticus\ seems indeed 

 to be the commonest and most obtrusive bird of this region, but far 

 away the other side the peaks, now and then the plaintive cry of the 

 curlews breaks upon our ears and sometimes we may catch sight of 

 them ' dreary gleams about the moorland.' Once we fancied we 

 heard the shrill pipe of the golden plover but could not see the bird. 

 A small brown pipit haunts the heather in great numbers, probably 

 Anthus pratensis ; but where the rock crops steeply out and is overhung 

 by great bunches of bilberry and gorse, there assuredly we shall see 

 the most characteristic bird of the mountain side, the Ring Ouzel, 

 5. tovquatus, and perhaps discover its well hidden nest and blackbird 

 like eggs. 



Returning to the Coleoptera ; stones are not numerous among 

 the heather, but beneath a large one we find Carabus arvensis. We 

 have taken this beetle commonly, high up on the great Snowdonian 

 mountains where it is generally of an obscure bronze colour or even 

 dead black, but this specimen shines with the rosy effulgence shown 

 by the first faint film of oxide on burnished copper. A common beetle 



