Notes on a New British Beetle. 215 



it has been found are Santry, Raheny, Portmarnock, and 

 Donabate in Co. Dublin ; I^aytown in Co. Meath ; Ternionfeckin 

 and Carlingford in Co. lyouth. It is obtained by beating 

 shrubs and trees. It is certainly remarkable that so com- 

 paratively large an insect should have been overlooked by the 

 older naturalists ; not a specimen is to be found in the collec- 

 tion of that prince of Irish entomologists, the late A. H. Haliday. 

 One can only conjecture that, in the localities where the insect 

 occurs, he did not for some reason collect by beating or .sweep- 

 ing. The wide distribution of the weevil and the analogy of 

 its range with that of other animals show that its presence here 

 cannot be ascribed to recent introduction. While it is not 

 possible to assert definitely that O. auropunctatus does not 

 occur in Great Britain, it is hardly likely that it has been 

 overlooked for many years in a country so well supplied with 

 coleopterists. 



From the discovery of this weevil in Ireland we are naturally 

 led to speculations as to how it found its v/ay here. In a case in 

 the Dublin Museum, recently described by me,^ I have ventured 

 to roughly group the animals of the British fauna in three 

 divisions : — those with a wide range over the whole of our 

 islands, those characteristic of the south-eastern and lowland 

 districts of Great Britain (" Teutonic Fauna"), and those 

 characteristic of Ireland and the western and highland dis- 

 tricts of Great Britain (" Celtic Fauna"). In this last division, 

 two distinct groups of animals at least can be recognised. 

 One includes animals of northern origin, characteristic of 

 northern and arctic Europe, and sometimes also of the Alps, 

 which have come into Ireland by way of Scotland ; of such the 

 ground-beetle Pelophila borealis, is perhaps the most striking 

 example. The other group comprises animals of southern 

 origin, which, outside the British ^ Isles, are found in the 

 Mediterranean district, and extend their range in some in- 

 stances as far as the Madeira, Canaries, and Azores. It is 

 clearly to this latter group that Otiorrhyiichus auropjaietatus 

 must be assigned. 



Dr. R. F. Scharff's recent preliminary paper on the Origin 

 of the Irish Fauna^ will doubtless be fresh in the minds of 

 all readers of these remarks, and his support of the theory 



1 



Report of Museums Association, 1894,, pp. 109, 117. 

 * Proc, Rd.A, (3) vol. iii., 1894, p. 479. 



