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THE YOUNG NATUEALIST. 



9.30. On leaving the train, I found to my annoyance that I was minus my 

 bag, which I recollected having unstrapped and placed on the rack in a train 

 into which we entered by mistake at Birkenhead. Fortunately it was a Bala and 

 Dolgelly train, and would call at Llangollen, so, as the bag contained all my 

 " traps," there was nothing for it but to wait and hope it would turn up. The 

 train amved in half-an-hour and, much to my relief, the companion of many 

 a pleasant entomological ramble had not been disturbed. Had it fallen into 

 the hands of the Eailway Co., speculation would have been rife as to who it 

 belonged to. From the scores of pill and salve boxes which it contained, I 

 might have been supposed to be a travelling " quack." But on the other 

 hand, my collecting bottle, with a zinc tube running through the bung, 

 looked suspiciously like an infernal machine, and I could not help calling to 

 mind that on the occasion of our last excursion to this very place, the notor- 

 ious " Dynamitard " Daly or Egan, I forget which, was arrested at Birken- 

 head station, not more than twenty minutes after we left. However there 

 was no need to be alarmed, and I was not called upon to prove my fitness to 

 be at large, or that my boxes and bottle were simply to be filled with 

 " moppats " and w clocks." 



We now hurried on to make up for lost time, taking the charming path- 

 way along the canal bank. Twenty minutes walk brought us to the slate 

 wharf, near which place a small stream rushed down from the hills into the 

 Dee, like scores of others which help to swell the waters of this winding and 

 noisy little river. On the banks of these streams, near their junction with 

 the river, many of our rare and local Coleoptera have their haunts, particu- 

 larly species of the genus Bembidium. We accordingly spent a short 

 time here, and were rewarded with Bembidium decorum, tibiale, atrocceruleum, 

 prasinum, and a very dark form of the common littorale, which we took in 

 hopes that it might on a closer examination prove to be Bruxellense or 

 testaceum. The three species first named were taken near the same place on 

 our last visit, but much more plentifully. B, monticola, bipunctatum, palu- 

 dosum and, I think, fluviatile are also taken here, the last three towards 

 autumn. A week might be very profitably spent in working nothing but 

 the river banks from Llangollen up through the Berwyns, and I feel certain 

 that many good species would be taken, if not something new to the British 

 fauna. But to-day our destination is the mountains, and while we inwardly 

 cry " Excelsior ! " our " strange device," had we unfurled our flag, would 

 have been seen to be " Miseodera arctica I " We each procured a stout 

 hedge- stake, to help us along, for the Euthin road soon began to assume a 

 gradient not over pleasant to top-coated travellers, and the sun, although 

 only an April one, was sufficiently strong to make hill-climbing uncomfort- 



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