tion; whilst a male from a full-fed oak-bred larva is of great bulk, and bears huge branching dentate mandibles. It is not, however, only the mandibles that are subject to this variation; all sexual developments, such as cornuted processes on head or thorax, swelling of hind femora, dilatation of the head or front tarsi, spining and curving of the hinder tibiæ, etc., come under the same law.

A very marked instance of a frequently observed habit of insects-viz., that of their frequenting places similar in colour to themselves, was constantly forced upon my eye at Rannoch by Rhagium indagator, a Longicorn beetle apparently peculiar to this part of our country, and belonging to a genus very destructive to timber, the fat, flat-headed larvæ swarming under pine-bark in all directions, and committing great havoc. This insect is of a mottled grey colour, strikingly similar to the lichen-covered bark of the larch, on which tree (and never on the dark black pine) I constantly found it, beetle and bark being so precisely alike in hue and markings, that it was possible absolutely to sit on the log and yet not see the insect. On these logs, and under the bark, the very flat Pytho depressus (another species added to our catalogue from Rannoch) is occasionally to be found-a beetle which, although apparently bulky when viewed from the upper side, is most eminently adapted for slipping into the narrowest cracks. Its voracious, elongate larva, armed at the hinder apex of the upper side with two recurved hooks, for the purpose of obtaining a fulcrum, is found under bark, where it preys upon the larvae of Rhagium, and other true wood-feeders.

Running about quickly, in company with Pytho and the fragile Dircæa, Clerus formicarius, a curiously banded and variegated species, strongly suggestive of a large exotic ant, might often be seen; its larva being of similar sub-cortical habits to that of the Pytho.

The freshly-cut stumps of fir-trees, fragrant with exuding turpentine, act as splendid traps for many beetles, Astinomus often settling on them, and a flattish, dull black Longicorn allied to it, Asemum striatum, called "the soft timber man" by the wood-cutters, being very plentiful. Ripping the bark off these and older stumps disclosed numerous colonies of Xylophagous Coleoptera, with their larvæ and attendants; the species of Hylastes and Hylurgus being very abundant in deeply cut narrow channels worked in the underside of the bark, at the end of each of which the change to pupa takes place, the perfect insect drilling a neat round hole through which it escapes to the surface. Two species of Ips (one yellow, the other black, with red spots), and three or four of the linear Rhizophagus, abound also in these galleries; syco

phants of the true wood-feeders, among which they have hitherto been considered to rank (as far as selection of food goes), until M. Perris, a distinguished French entomologist, pointed out their true relations with regard to the Xylophaga. From his observations (which I have been enabled to corroborate in a great measure) it appears that the species of Ips and Rhizophagus enter the holes made in the fir-trees (either in chinks of the bark, where there is the thinnest space between the inner and outer coatings, or, in the case of felled stumps, at the junction of the bark and wood) by the Hylastes, and lay their eggs in the galleries made by the latter, on whose larvæ their larvæ feed. M. Perris has observed the larvæ of the common R. depressus with half their bodies plunged into the larvæ or pupa of Hylesinus or Hylastes, devouring them; and I have myself seen the same species half immersed in a sickly specimen of a perfect Hylurgus piniperda.*

At the junction of the bark and solid wood in freshly-cut stumps, the female of Pissodes pini, a large and very prettily marked northern species of weevil, may be constantly seen, laboriously drilling round holes with its rostrum, in which to deposit eggs. Its fat, full-grown larva, or the pupa in a gnawed out cell, may often be found near the ground, to which it has eaten its way under the bark; where also its ally, the still larger Hylobius abietis—a clumsy, dull black, delicately yellow marked Curculio, of very clinging habits as to its tarsi— undergoes its changes, and may be found copiously. The latter insect has been imported in Scotch timber (in the larval state) to the south, where it is not uncommon.

These species, though constantly wood-feeders, exhibit a great difference in structure to certain other tree-frequenters; their heavy bulk being strongly contrasted by the thin, flat, elegant, long-limbed, Dendrophagus crenatus, a very rare sub-cortical species, which I found coursing rapidly, towards evening, over a bare stump; and by the cylindrical Xyloterus lineatus, which undergoes its changes deep in the solid wood, drilling a small, neat shot-hole through to the surface at right-angles from the centre, and lurking at the mouth of its burrow, into which it retreats backwards on the least alarm. A similar, but larger, hole is drilled in the very hardest pines by the larva of Hylecætus dermestoides, which nothing but a woodman's axe can circumvent. The exceedingly flimsy material of which this curious elongate Malaco

* Certain species of Epuraa-small flat testaceous beetles, often seen in flowers and fungi, or at the exuding sap of trees-are also attendants upon the larvæ of the small wood-feeders; one especially, E. pusilla (conspicuous through the arched middle tibiæ of its male), thronging the galleries. I imagine that they are attracted by the wet frass and sappy exudations caused by the operations of the Xylophaga.

derm is constructed causes its burrowing operations to appear the more wonderful. In the male, usually much darker than the other sex, the maxillary palpi are of great size, assuming the appearance of a fan, on account of the third joint (which is much developed) having numerous bronchial appendages.

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The southern naturalist can hardly fail to be struck by the great prevalence of certain conspicuous species of Elaterida, skip-jacks,"-a family with which he cannot make much acquaintance in his own district. Here many of them abound, and they are often of large size and bright colours, from the very rare banded and lovely Athöus undulatus to the shining black Elater nigrinus, beaten off birches; the very stones on the sandy shores of the loch covering little families of the jerking Cryptohypnus. Their long, vermiform larvæ abound in rotten wood; and some bright shining Cteniceri, with strongly-serrated antennæ in the male, fly about in the hot sunshine, often settling on timber with a metallic clang. The females of these are more sedentary and much rarer, occurring under stones, etc., and having the antennæ much smaller and more simple.

Of the Phytophaga, so abundant in the south, perhaps the most abundant of the few species to be seen is (at its proper season, and in its right locality) a most beautiful and variable species of Cryptocephalus (first discovered here in Great Britain in 1865), the 10-punctatus of Linnæus; which, in its normal form, is clear yellow, with black spots-the male being darker and banded-and both sexes "sporting" into a deep black variety (bothnicus, Linn.). This elegant creature defies the net, and has to be absolutely "stalked" in its native dwarf sallow beds; it drops hopelessly into the wet moss if a shadow fall on it, and in the hot sunshine flies as readily as the common green Tiger-beetle (Cicindela campestris), which abounds in the hot paths. Of the latter a black form occurs, but exceedingly rarely; dark forms, also, are to be found of many bright insects (a circumstance often observed in marshy places), so glistening and coppery a species as Anchomenus ericeti being here taken of a dull, deep black colour.

Want of space prevents me from entering upon the numerous fungus-feeders abounding here, from the gregarious and minute species of Cis to the large Cassidiform Thymalus -also found in the New Forest; or upon the many Coprophagous Lamellicorns, or the very numerous species of Brachelytra or Staphylinida (of which Scotland is the metropolis), from the lustrous but rapacious bandit Quædius laevigatus under bark (whose crooked yellow pupæ are often to be seen) to the many Tachini, living in stercorc-insects of an apparently puzzling uniformity, but a close observation of whose diversely

sculptured anal plates has resulted already in the addition of two species from Scotland new to us. It is in the Brachelytra that the most numerous novelties have been, and will for some time continue to be, found. But a few words must be given to the beetles found upon the absolute mountain-tops and sides, which are of different habits and forms to those on the lower levels. On the topmost peaks, among the mist, the rare Miscodera arctica, a huge Dyschirius in show, occurs under stones; where, also, Otiorhynchus maurus (oftener dead and fragmentary than alive) may be seen; and the Alpine Nebria Gyllenhali (not seldom with lurid red elytra) replaces the closely allied N. brevicollis of the lowlands; the common Patrobus rufipes being in like manner superseded by P. septentrionis and P. clavipes. Here in moss, and under mica slabs, occur Calathus nubigena (apparently a mountain form of the common C. melanocephalus), Anthophagus alpinus (the males with strongly-cornuted heads, and long apical joint to the antennæ), Arpedium, Geodromicus, and hosts of other Staphylinidæ. This pure mountain work has great charms, apart from the adjuncts of scenery and the bracing results of the toil; for the species found are of strange aspect, the chances numerous of obtaining novelties or observing unrecorded facts, and the problems of arrested development (exemplified by apterous conditions, short elytra, etc.) and mutation of species appear to be undergoing solution under one's eyes.

In a paper of this limited length it is, of course, impossible to note more than the general features and most salient forms of so extensive a subject as the entomological productions of a rich district; indeed, a mere enumeration of all the new and rare species that have been found at or near Rannoch alone would occupy too much space-in spite of the fact that only two orders, the Lepidoptera and Coleoptera, have been as yet worked with any energy. Enough has been done to show that for many years the English naturalist need not travel out of his own country to find novelties.

PLANS FOR IMPROVING LONDON.

THE present year, A.D. 1866, marks a period of exactly two centuries since the great fire of London, an event at that time naturally considered as a great national calamity, but which might have tended to a great national good, if firmness and sound common sense had been allowed to prevail over prejudices and self-interests. The little mind and short-sightedness were unfortunately as common in those days as at the present time, and Sir Christopher Wren's noble plan for rebuilding the destroyed portions of the metropolis was rejected in the same obstinate manner as the proposed principal lines of our railways were in our own days, when first brought before the public. In 1766, exactly one hundred years after London's great conflagration, John Gwynn published his London and Westminster Improved, illustrated by some admirable plans, in which more than one hundred improvements are mapped and described. In the present year, after the lapse of another century, the Engineer and Surveyor to the Commissioners of Sewers for the City of London brings forward a most able and elaborate report on The Traffic and Improvements in the Public Ways of the City of London.

It may, perhaps, be interesting to take a glance at these centenary productions. John Gwynn was a bold man in his way; expense to him was a matter not to be thought of. The title of his work states that his illustrated plans were prefixed by "A Discourse on Publick Magnificence," and in 132 pages of letter-press he contended for his several suggested improvements with all the ardour and ability of the Préfet Haussmann. Gwynn proposed two royal palaces-one in Hyde Park, with a circular road of one mile in circumference to enclose it, and another to fill up the space from the Green Park to St. James's Street, with one end towards Piccadilly and the other on the site of the present St. James's Palace. The Houses of Parliament he proposed to rebuild; and not having the fear of the mediævalists before his eyes, he desired to make a clear sweep of Westminster Hall, in order that the site might be raised to a proper and higher level above the river. And although at the first sight we may be astounded at so audacious a proposal, yet, in so large an outlay as there has necessarily been in the construction of the Palace of Westminster, the additional amount in raising the ground floor-the piano nobile-of the whole structure some fifteen feet, and rebuilding Westminster Hall on its present site, raising the roof, and making every portion of it a strict restoration of the present venerable pile, would have been at a cost justified by the national importance