238 



TIERRA DEL FUEGO. [chap. xi. 



well as in that of the Falkland Islands. I do not ground this 

 statement merely on my own observation, but I heard it from 

 the Spanish inhabitants of the latter place, and from Jemmy 

 Button with regard to Tierra del Fuego. On the banks of the 

 Santa Cruz, in 50° south, I saw a frog ; and it is not improbable 

 that these animals, as well as lizards, may be found as far south 

 as the Strait of Magellan, where the country retains the charac- 

 ter of Patagonia ; but within the damp and cold limit of Tierra 

 del Fuego not one occurs. That the climate would not have 

 suited some of the orders, such as lizards, might have been fore- 

 seen ; but with respect to frogs, this was not so obvious 



Beetles occur in very small numbers : it was lo.ig before 

 I could believe that a country as large as Scotland, covered with 

 vegetable productions and with a variety of stations, could be so 

 unproductive. The few which I found were alpine species (Har- 

 palidce and Heteromidae) living under stones. The vegetable- 

 feeding Chrysomelidse, so eminently characteristic of the Tropics, 

 are here almost entirely absent ;* I saw very few flies, butterflies, 

 or bees, and no crickets or Orthoptera. In the pools of water I 

 found but few aquatic beetles, and not any fresh-water shells : 

 Succinea at first appears an exception ; but here it must be called 

 a terrestrial shell, for it lives on the damp herbage far from 

 water. Land-shells could be procured only in the same alpine 

 situations with the beetles. I have already contrasted the climate 

 as well as the general appearance of Tierra del Fuego with that 

 of Patagonia ; and the difference is strongly exemplified in the 

 entomology. I do not believe they have one species in common ; 

 certainly the general character of the insects is widely different. 



If we turn from the land to the sea, we shall find the latter as 

 abundantly stocked with living creatures as the former is poorly 

 so. In all parts of the world a rocky and partially protected 

 shore perhaps supports, in a given space, a greater number of 



* I believe I must except one alpine Haltica, and a single specimen of a 

 Melasoma. Mr. Waterhouse informs me, that of the Harpahdae there are 

 ei'^ht or nine species— the forms of the greater number bemg very peculiar ; 

 of^'Heteromera, four or five species; of Rhyncophora six or seven; and 

 of the following families one species in each : Staphylinidse, li^latendse, 

 Cobrionidffi, Melolouthidffi. The species in the other orders are even fewer. 

 In all the orders, the scarcity of the individuals is even more reinarkable 

 than that of the species. Most of the Coleoptera have been carefully de- 

 scribed by Mr. Waterhouse in the Annals of Nat. Hist« 



