118 
THE ENTOMOLOGISTS WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
the number of species and specimens fall 
off as we recede from the shores of the 
German Ocean, and how remarkably, 
therefore, the ingenious theory of the late 
Professor E. Forbes is corroborated, — 
that the greater number of our animals 
and plants migrated from the German 
plains across the (then) upkeaved bed of 
the Glacial sea, which constituted a land 
of passage even after the formation of 
St. George’s Channel. 
To pass over, however, these more 
speculative and philosophical considera- 
tions, we assert that, whilst the west is 
(in a broad sense) inferior to the east, 
with respect to its Coleopterous Fauna, 
there are regions towards the west which 
very far surpass, in a general way, the 
cold and clayey Midland Counties, — 
counties which we were under the painful 
necessity of denouncing, ore rotundo , in 
a late number of the ‘ Intelligencer.’ 
Such emphatically is the border region 
of England and Wales, as exemplified 
in Monmouthshire, Hereford, the lower 
parts of Gloucester, Worcester and 
Shropshire. We believe that there are 
few portions of England, if any, after the 
far-famed “London district” and the 
country to the east of it, which would be 
more likely to repay the labours of a 
thorough investigation than the glorious 
valley of the Wye, from Chepstow to 
Monmouth. Clothed with the richest 
vegetation, pent in by hills, and sub- 
jected to constant floods from one of 
the most rapid rivers in the king- 
dom, it presents conditions for the ac- 
cumulation of insect-life, which can 
scarcely be surpassed anywhere. It 
was, indeed, near to the ruined walls of 
Tintern that Mr. Wollaston discovered 
a small field of Italian rye-grass abso- 
lutely alive with the (then all but unique) 
Synaptus Jiliformis, whilst the flowers of 
the common meadow-sweet, in the woods 
round Piercefield, were found by the same 
gentleman to be no less the resort of the 
rare Orsodacna Cera. si (the O. chlorotica 
of British cabinets). The brackish spots 
at the edges of the Wye nearer to its 
mouth, abound with the Dyschirius 
salinus, Pogonus littoralis , Bembidium 
lunalum, and such like species of sub- 
saline habits; aiid, on the wooded slopes 
between the picturesque Castle of Chep- 
stow and the Manor of Piercefield, 
Cislela castanea , Chrysomela laminala, 
Ochina Hederce and Lamprosoma con- 
color are at times common. 
The upland regions, moreover, of that 
county (and the adjoining Forest of 
Dean, in Gloucestershire) have been im- 
mortalized by the capture of many 
“gems;” and, not to mention other spe- 
cies which have been long on record, 
the Rev. C. A. Kuper has been the an- 
nual detector, for several years past, near 
Monmouth, of one of the rarest of our 
native Elaleridce , — the Elaler casta- 
neus, Linn. 
Worcestershire, again, both in its 
higher and lower portions, is exceedingly 
productive. Nearly all the specimens of 
Clythra tridentata and Anthribus albums 
which enrich our British collections, are 
from Bewdley Forest (though the latter 
we have found ourselves also, sparingly, 
in the Forest of Wychwood, in Oxford- 
shire) ; whilst the large and beautiful 
Platyrhinus latiroslris occurs, not unfre- 
quently, beneath the moist and loosened 
bark of ash-trees, both in the vale of 
Evesham and near Cheltenham (in Glou- 
cestershire). The Malvern Hills, also, 
upon which the Chrysomela marginnta 
used to be tolerably abundant, are by 
no means barren, — particularly on the 
western side, towards Ledbury, where the 
woods teem with life. 
Shropshire, — that terra incognita to 
the mass of entomologists, — we need 
scarcely call attention to, since it has 
been rendered immortal long ago through 
the captures of one of our most astound- 
ing collectors. The only question that 
arises is, what does not occur there? 
Pachyta Lamed (inhabiting the summits 
