PREFACE. IN publishing the present compilation of work done in the study and the field, it is pressed upon me that life ยกs all too short to perfect even so small a task as an account of the insects of a single county.
The primal
difficulty is to know when the enumeration of any particular branch is sufficiently complete for presentation to the generations that follow.
It is
obviously ridiculous to give the observations of a year as representing the comparative frequency of a county's insect-fauna, and yet, upon the other hand, it is equally foolish to delay their publication when a good representative list has been compiled.
It is hoped that the present volume,
which comprises the work of the past ten years, appears when all those species which annually occur with us have been tabulated.
Many others
are likely to do s o ; in fact, it was not till the present year that the generally distributed Acompocoris pygmaeus was met with, and then it was found in so diverse localities that one wonders it had lain perdu so long. As is the case with the Coleรณptera, we find three main divisions of the county, each producing, if not a peculiar fauna, at least a sufficiently different one to warrant especial excursions being undertaken with a view to obtaining distinct species.
The heavy lands of the central portion
produce those kinds which appear to be of general distribution throughout the Midlands; the coast sands and, to a lesser degree, the sandy heaths which border them westward along nearly their whole length, afford species attached to saline and arenaceous situations ; but the peculiar inland sandhills, dunes and primeval heaths to the north-west of the county, are responsible for many of its particular rarities.
To the sterility of these