The YOtfNG NATURALIST: 



A Monthly Magazine of Natural History. 



Part 70. OCTOBER, 1885. Vol. 6. 



COLEOPTERA HUNTING ON SNOWDON. 



By Dr. JOHN W. ELLIS. 



IN the September number of the " Young Naturalist/' Mr. Wilding, in 

 relating our adventures at Llangollen, refers to the fact of our being 

 able to see from the summit of Moel-y-Gamelin, the distant peak which we 

 hoped to visit at no long period of time and explore for beetles. He does 

 not, however, tell us how provokingly near we were to Snowdon two days 

 after our Llangollen excursion, when we spent a day at Bettws-y-Coed, and 

 walked from thence to Capel Curig. Our first peep at the mountain home of 

 so many good beetles, was obtained just after passing the " Swallow Falls 

 Inn," where it appears over the N.E. or Capel Curig slope of Moel Seabod. 

 Proceeding on our way the distant mountain disappears as the spur of the 

 nearer one becomes more elevated, but after passing through the village of 

 Capel Curig, and climbing some rough boggy ground at the side of the two 

 lakes known as the " Mirrors of Snowdon," we obtained a splendid view of 

 the tricephalous peak, which though only some seven or eight miles distant, 

 was still to remain to us terra incognita, at any rate for the present. On 

 this occasion our success in collecting both beetles and lepidoptera was about 

 nil — the only species of the latter seen being the ubiquitous Diurnea fag- 

 ella, which was abundant on the trees overhanging the Llugwy about the 

 the " miner's bridge." 



At Whitsuntide, I spent two days (Saturday and Sunday) along with 

 Professors Herdman, of Liverpool University College, and Milnes Marshall, 

 of Owen's College, Manchester, and a number of kindred spirits, in a dredg- 

 ing expedition which had for its object the investigation of the marine fauna 

 of the North Wales coast. Saturday evening, after calling at Llandudno for 

 two of our party, we spent in a most unpleasant manner dredging and rolling 

 (especially the latter) off the Great Orme, but the weather turned out so 

 rough and wet, that instead of making for Beaumaris where we had intended 

 to spend the night, we put back into Llandudno Bay, and most of us were 



