62 The Irish Naturalist. [ March, 



Turning to the group of southern or Pyrenean plants we 

 find a corresponding group of animals. The Kerry slug — 

 Geomalacus maculosus, confined to a few square miles in the 

 south-west and only known elsewhere from Portugal ; Mesites 

 Tardyi, a beetle of a Mediterranean and Atlantic Island genus, 

 distributed nearly all over Ireland, and occurring also at a 

 few points in the west of Great Britain ; the house-spider 

 {legenarta hibernlca) of Dublin and Cork — unknown in Great 

 Britain and closely related to a Pyrenean species ; and the 

 new ^x\\A'&\i'SN^^'S!V^{Otiorrhy7ichusaiuvpunctatus^2Xso a Pyrenean 

 species, discovered by Messrs. Halbert and Cuthbert along the 

 coast north of Dublin, are a few examples of this group. 

 Striking additions to it have lately been made by Mr. Pocock's 

 record of the millipede Polydesmus gallicus,^ and Mr. Friend's 

 discovery of two Mediterranean earthworms, Allolobophora 

 vejieta and ^. Gcorgiiin Ireland." It is remarkable and puzzling, 

 however, that while the Pyrenean plants keep strictly to the west 

 of Ireland, most of these animals range to the east and some are 

 not found in the west at all. There is a western species, 

 however, which I have no doubt should be reckoned as be- 

 longing to this southern group. I,ast year a former member 

 of this Club — Rev. R. M'Clean — took on a mountain behind 

 Sligo a specimen of Erebla epiphroii — a butterfly unknown in 

 Ireland since Birchall took it thirty years ago on Croagh 

 Patrick. As this is a Scottish and north of England insect, 

 it has been believed that it came into Ireland from the north. 

 But when we consider that it is confined to the mountains of 

 southern Europe: Pyrenees, Alps, Vosges, &c.,and is unknown 

 in Scandinavia, we must believe that it came to us with the 

 Pyrenean flora and passed northward from us into Scotland. 



But there is another and very distinct southern fauna in 

 western Ireland. In a study of the distribution of British 

 butterflies on which I am now engaged, I find that all the 

 species of southern range in Great Britain have a southern 

 or western range in Ireland. Our collections made in Gal way 

 furnish some striking parallels in other groups to this obser- 

 vation. The Rose-chafer {Cetonia aurata) which we found in 

 numbers on Inishmore might not be seen in a walk of two 

 hundred miles across Ireland. It seems only to be at all plen- 



' Irish Nat, vol. ii., 1893, p. 309. = See pp. 70 and 72 of current number. 



