Mr. T. V. Wollaston on certain Coleopterous Insects. 503 



Epeira tubulosa. 



Add the following particulars to the remarks on this species 

 recorded in the catalogue (Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. 2nd Series, 

 vol. X. p. 249) : — In December 1856 I received from Mr. R. H. 

 Meade an adult female, which had been captured by Mr. 0. P. 

 Cambridge near Blandford in Dorsetshire. 



XL VIII. — On certain Coleopterous Insects from the Cape de 

 Verde Islands, By T. Vernon "Wollaston, M.A., F.L.S. 



The southern position which the Cape de Verde Islands occupy, 

 with reference to the neighbouring Atlantic groups, renders any 

 contribution towards their fauna of peculiar interest ; and it is 

 with much pleasure, therefore, that I am enabled to offer, through 

 the liberality of my friends John Gray, Esq., and the Rev. Hamlet 

 Clark, a few observations on the Coleoptera which they collected 

 at St. Vincent^ s, during a day's sojourn there (whilst on their 

 passage to Rio Janeiro) in December of 1856. 



Considering the excessive barrenness of this the only island 

 at which the mail-steamers touch, on their outward and home- 

 ward route, and the short space of time which is allowed for the 

 passengers to go on shore, it will not appear strange that only 

 fifteen species were the result of the combined labours of Messrs. 

 Gray and Clark during the day that they spent at St.Vincent's. 

 Yet, despite the poverty of the place, in an entomological point 

 of view, it is not difficult to gather, even from these few expo- 

 nents of the Coleopterous world, — if not indeed the general 

 nature of its insect population, at any rate the important fact, 

 that the preponderance which the Heteromera possess (as 

 might, however, be anticipated), over all the other sections of 

 the order, in this sterile spot, is quite extraordinary. Thus, of 

 the fifteen species alluded to, whilst as many as eight are Hetero- 

 merous, only two belong to the Geodephaga, and but one to each 

 of the great divisions Brachelytra, Necrophaga, Cordylocerata, 

 Priocerata, and Rhynchophora. 



The two representatives of the Geodephaga are Cicindela litto- 

 ralis, Fab. (an insect of Mediterranean latitudes, occurring both 

 in the south of Europe and the north of Africa), and an Ambly- 

 stomus, which may perhaps* be peculiar to these islands, and 



* I say " perhaps," because the species which form the subject of the 

 paper, by Erichson, above alluded to, are professedly /rom Angola. Never- 

 theless I am assured by Dr. Schaum of Berlin, that the collector who 

 amassed the materials from which Erichson's memoir was compiled, stopped 

 at the Cape de Verdes, on his passage to the African coast ; and that, as 



