REVIEWS. 
107 
sufficiently important or uniform to justify the author in considering them 
distinct species. He specifies Tachys gracilis, Steph., as a “smaller exam¬ 
ple the dimensions, however, given for T. pusillus are less ; those of T. 
gracilis corresponding with those of the type. Of the Cicindelidse, of 
which Mr. Stephens admits six species, one Cic. sylvicola (first described as 
distinct by Mr. Curtis), is regarded as merely “ a green example of C. 
hybridaso far as it can lay claim to being indigenous to this country, 
although “the original representative,” “is by most entomologists consi¬ 
dered a distinct species, and is a larger insect, but not found in Britain.” 
Perhaps we may be permitted to doubt whether still further investigation 
may not lead to the re-admission of some of the species rejected by Mr. 
Dawson; at any rate, it will be interesting, and possibly useful, to collect 
such gleanings of information about any of them as may tend, however 
slightly, to bring the question of their authenticity to a final issue. With 
this object in view, we will allude, for a moment, to a species, Nebria pici- 
cornis, included in a list, at page viii., of the Prel. Obs., as erroneously re¬ 
ported British. Mr. Dawson’s note on it is as follows:—“ Stated to have 
been captured by the Rev. F. W. Hope, in Longmont Forest. Its natural 
habitat is on the muddy banks of rivers and lakes, and the locality in 
which it is reported to have been found is so widely different from those 
which it naturally affects, that I am inclined to suspect that it has been 
introduced into the British Fauna by mistake.” But we have been in¬ 
formed that another specimen, accurately answering to Mr. Stephens’s 
description, and in length between 6^ and 6J lines, was taken by Mr. 
J. Walter Lea and his brother, in 1847, near Oxford (not an unsuitable 
locality), and a note to that effect is made against that species in the mar¬ 
gin of his copy of Mr. Stephens’s Manual. As, however, owing to un¬ 
avoidable neglect for a long time, the whole of the collection in which the 
insect was placed was subsequently destroyed by mites, it is, unhappily, im¬ 
possible to subject the specimen to further investigation; so the report must, 
of course, be taken quantum valeat . But as the locality was the only 
objection to the reception of the insect on the previous testimony, and as 
the same difficulty can scarcely apply to this latter instance, it seems, at 
least, worth mentioning. Curtis says it was “first taken by Dr. Leach, near 
Ashburton, Devon ” 
But it is not only with respect to the number of indigenous species that 
Mr. Dawson comes before us in the light of a wholesale reformer; his 
treatment of the ordinarily received families and genera is scarcely more 
merciful. Of the six families into which the Geodephaga have been 
divided, he rejects four (the Brachinidae, Scaritidae, and Harpalidae, of 
