Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/145

Rh his collection during the months of winter. It is of an excursion of this kind during the Christmas holidays that I am about to write. I was spending mine at York; the season had been unusually severe, with much snow, and being succeeded by mild weather, a rapid thaw was produced: this in the level round York soon caused a widely extended flood. Mr. Henry Baines, who is now the subcurator of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, and myself, having hired a boat for the purpose, set out, our intention being to procure some of the rejectamenta brought down by the river. We were soon on a waste of waters, nothing being visible over a wide expanse, except the tops of the hedge-rows and a few wild-ducks, which took care to keep out of the range of our guns, with which we were also provided. We had a regular steeple-chase, and had often to put our boat to its speed to avoid sticking in the hedges which we topped.

After a long and novel row we found a large quantity of rejectamenta, which the eddying stream of the river had forced out of the current into a corner. It was composed of very small bits of stick, straw and grass, and we could see, as we filled it into a sack, that it was perfectly alive with beetles. We left it till the following day to allow the water to drain off; and though we had seen something of the multitude of insects the day before, we were not prepared for the sight that awaited us next morning. The outside of the poke was covered many deep with beetles which had forced their way through the sackcloth. They were in tens of thousands, and when swept off filled a large basin. The inside was alike swarming with life, and a large portion of its contents—and it held two or three bushels—was composed of Coleoptera, showing how vast—how enormous must be the waste of life during a widely extended flood. Amongst such myriads we expected to secure some good things, but in these our expectations we were disappointed; they were limited to a few genera—Haltica, Apion, Stenus, and hosts of Staphylinidæ. We had however the satisfaction of thinking that we had more than atoned for all the insect murders we had previously committed, by now rescuing so many insect lives from drowning.—W.C. Hewitson; Bristol, Feb. 1843.

examined various specimens of those interesting and curious insects denominated walking leaves (Phyllium, Latreille) through