Volume 9 - Electric Scotland

ZOOLOGICAL NOTES 55
in the July 1899 number of this journal. -- WILLIAM EVANS,
Edinburgh.
Sirex juveneus, Linn., in Moray. A female of this Saw-fly was
picked up on i3th September last by a workman engaged near the
harbour at Hopeman. A foreign ship was in the harbour, and the
finder thought the insect had flown from the vessel. This seems
likely, as Hopeman is not a well- wooded locality. HENRY H.
BROWN, Elgin.
Sirex juveneus in Dalmeny Woods. This wood-boring insect,
which is evidently extending its range in Scotland, made its appearance
in considerable numbers among some ripe Scotch fir in the
Warrens plantation, Dalmeny Park, in the autumn of 1899. The
borings were not noticed until the trees were felled, and the insect
itself was not got until the wood was being cut up. Large numbers
of this Sirex were then brought to light,
in all stages of development.
The female insect was much more common than the male, which is
distinguished by its smaller size and red abdominal band. In eating
its
way out the insect makes a formidable curved tunnel in the wood,
generally about 5 inches long, and of the diameter of a pencil. Sirex
juveneus has not previously been recorded in Linlithgowshire. -
CHARLES CAMPBELL, Dalmeny Park.
Sirex gigas in Forfarshire. I
beg to inform you of an
occurrence of Sirex gigas at Craigendowie, in the parish of Lethnot,
Forfarshire, on nth August
last. A schoolboy who had been
loading fire-wood chiefly larch saw two specimens, which seemed
to rise from the timber. One of these a female he brought me ;
the other was permitted to escape. Not having seen the insect
before, I sent it to Dr. T. F. Dewar, B.Sc., Arbroath, who was kind
enough to identify it for me. I have since thought that as there
were, about two years ago, extensive structural alterations on a farmsteading
about a mile away, the insects may have been brought to
the district in the larval state in the timber required then. T. GRAY
PHILIP, Edinburgh.
Boreus hiemalis (Z.), in Lanarkshire. On and December
1899, while searching for spiders in Braidwood Glen, near Carluke,
Lanarkshire, I found a female of this odd -looking Neuropterous
insect. So far as I can discover, there is no previous record of the
species for the Clyde area. In addition to the Scottish occurrences
mentioned in my note in the "Annals" for 1897 (p. 49), a female
was taken at Clova, Forfarshire, in April 1895 ("Ent. Mo. Mag." (2),
vol. vi. p. 240). The first Scottish record of the insect appears to
be that for Berwickshire, by the late James Hardy of Oldcambus, in
"The Zoologist" (1848), p. 2175. WILLIAM EVANS, Edinburgh.