128 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



researches," the earth is divided — the still little known region of Australia 

 not excepted. 



This poverty of species appears the more striking since the area of our 

 Fauna is not only the largest, but also the most thoroughly searched. 

 Although it does not extend to the tropics, that genuine home of the Hes- 

 peridae, it is, nevertheless, in this respect not less favorably situated than 

 is North America north of Mexico, yet still falls far behind that country. 



Kirby's Synonymical Catalogue of Diurnal Lepidoptera ( 1 8 7 1 ) embraces 

 eleven hundred and two species of Hesperians, known either by descrip- 

 tions or figures. Staudinger's Catalogue of Lepidoptera of t/ie European 



* See this excellent work : " The Geographical Distribution of Animals, by A. R. 



Wallace; Authorized German edition by A. B. Meyer, 1876." I would here call atten- 

 tion to the fact that the boundaries of the first primary region of Mr. Wallace, which he 

 names Palsearctic, almost exactly coincide with those of our European region. The only 

 difference is that Wallace places the boundary farther south— in Africa to the Tropic of 

 Cancer, in Asia to the Himalaya range, and farther eastward into the south of China. 

 But this difference can hardly be considered as such, for, Lepidopterologically, we can- 

 not determine the southern limit of these almost unknown regions, but hypothetically. 

 Moreover, Wallace's boundary lines do not rest upon a very sure basis ; Japan and 

 Northern and Central China are overlapping provinces of such mixed animal population 

 that we are almost as well justified in adding them to the northern adjacent (Indian) 

 Faunal-province as to the southern. Thus, then, neai'ly the same result has been reached 

 in two different ways. Ours, which is only applicable to one order of insects, is based 

 upon a plain comparison of the statistics of the local Faunas known to us, and the prin- 

 ciple laid down by Schouw, according to which that part of the earth's surface which is 

 to be established as a natural kingdom must possess at least one-half of its species and 

 one-fourth of its genera as peculiar to itself. Wallace, in his investigations embracing 

 the whole domain of zoology, lays the principal stress on the distribution of the Mam- 

 malia, and takes into consideration their present and also their pre-historic condition, as 

 far as the latter may be determined from the fossil remains in former epochs of the earth. 

 Now, if two divisions of the animal kingdom, so widely distinct, both by their organiza- 

 tion and means of distribution, as the mammals and butterflies, return essentially the 

 same answer to the zoographer respecting the extent of the region to which our division 

 of the world belongs, this, certainly, may be considered a strong guarantee of the proba- 

 bility that we have made no mistake, but that we have, indeed, found a region which is 

 consistently natural in all its belongings. For the present I retain the old name of Euro- 

 pean Faunal-region, together with its accustomed boundaries, which will be in conformity 

 with Staudinger's Catalogue. Staudinger, as is well known, annexes thereto Arctic 

 America, and for good reasons, although on no better grounds than our Transatlantic 

 colleagues would have in adding to their Faunal-region the Arctic portion of the Eastern 

 hemisphere. 



