106 
REVIEWS. 
error has become rather prevalent—at least in the nomenclature and ar¬ 
rangement of the stirps, which is the subject of the present Monograph. 
To this opinion the publication of the present volume is, perhaps, princi¬ 
pally owing, as appears from the opening sentences of the preliminary ob¬ 
servations :— 
u In consequence of a suggestion made to me by several of my entomological 
friends and correspondents, I have been induced to undertake, and, at length, to pub¬ 
lish, a specific arrangement of the carnivorous ground beetles indigenous to the 
British Isles—a group to which I have paid much attention. No small amount of 
confusion appears to have existed in their nomenclature, which has arisen from the 
circumstance of an undue importance having been assigned to varieties, differing 
merely in size and colour, which have either been formed into imaginary species, or 
have been mistaken for others which have never been found in Britain ; the result 
of which has been that- the total amount of actual species has been considerably 
overrated.” 
The value of this word u considerably” may be readily gathered from a 
comparison of Mr. Dawson’s Tabula specierum with the corresponding 
portion of Stephens’s Manual; in the latter of which we find, under “ Stirps 
Geodephaga,” 472 (or, deducting 23, included in parentheses, as improperly 
introduced into the British lists, 449) species, while in Mr. Dawson’s list 
there are only 294 ; in other words, 155 species, or about one-third of 
the whole, have disappeared. Indeed the difference is still greater; for of 
the 294 species admitted by Mr. Dawson, about fifteen are introduced for 
the first time into the catalogue of the British Geodephaga; so that of 
Stephens’s 449, no less than 170 are rejected by Mr. Dawson. Such a 
result may well seem startling; but, however much our national vanity may 
shrink from being thus roughly spoiled of so many of our fancied indi¬ 
genous fauna, the sentence of condemnation would seem to have been not 
lightly pronounced— ' 
u I have been unwilling,” he says, “ to reject any reputed indigenous species 
which I felt that I could reasonably retain, and yet, after full consideration, have 
been compelled to reduce their aggregate amount very considerably, either because 
many of them are evidently varieties of others, or because no sufficiently conclusive 
evidence exists to warrant their retention in the British Fauna. In the subfamily-r- 
Bembidides, particularly—I have been compelled to reject about two-fifths as mere 
varieties or immature examples, which may satisfactorily be resolved into some one 
or other of the remainder.’’ 
Thus, for example, Bembidium obtusum (Tachys obtusus, Steph.) is 
given as the type of a species, of which Tachys immunis, pusillus, and 
gracilis, of Stephens, are considered varieties, the distinction between them 
consisting mainly in different shades of colour in the elytra and legs, attri¬ 
butable to greater or less degrees of maturity, and in the greater or less 
depth of the foveas at the base of the thorax. In the type there are two 
impressions on the third interstice of the elytra, which seem to be occasion¬ 
ally wanting in the varieties ; but the departures from the type are not 
