LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. Ixxi 



unfortunately, without sufficient command of materials for the com- 

 pilation of a useful history of that small but difficult group, and with 

 a useless imposition of new names to forms which he thinks may 

 have been already published, but has not the means of verifying, 

 De Notaris, under the auspices of the municipality of Genoa, has 

 published a synopsis of Italian Biyology, forming a separate octavo 

 volume of considerable bulk. 



Of the other two great European peninsulas I have little to say, 

 notwithstanding their great comparative biological importance. The 

 Western or Iberian peninsula is the main centre of that remarkable 

 Western flora to which I specially alluded in 1869, and which, 

 more perhaps than any other, requires comparison with entomolo- 

 gical and other faunas. But Spain is sadly in arrear in her pursuit 

 of science. With great promise in the latter half of the last century, 

 and certainly the country of many eminent naturalists, especially 

 botanists, she has now for so long been subject to chronic pronun- 

 ciamentos that she leaves the natural riches of her soil to be investi- 

 gated by foreigners. Willkomm and Lange's ' Prodromus Florae His- 

 panicge,' which, when I last mentioned it, was in danger of remaining 

 a fragment, has since been continued, and, it is hoped, will shortly 

 be completed by the publication of one more part. I have no notes 

 on any recent zoological papers beyond Steindachner's Reports on 

 his Ichthyological tour in Spain and Portugal, and the Catalogues 

 of the Zoological Museum of Lisbon publishing by the Lisbon 

 Academy of Sciences. The Eastern peninsula, Turkey and Greece, 

 with the exception of some slight attempts at Athens, has no ende- 

 mic biological literature, and, with its present very unsatisfactory 

 social state, affords little attraction to foreign visitors. The Levant, 

 in respect of botany at least, has been much more fully investigated ; 

 but there, as in Turkey, much yet remains to be done ; and pending 

 the issue of Boissier's second volume already mentioned, I know of 

 nothing of any importance in the biology of the East Mediterranean 

 region as having been worked out within the last two or three years. 

 As an hiatus, however, and yet a link between the Indian and the 

 European floras and faunas, it will amply repay the study to be 

 bestowed upon it by future naturalists. 



VII. Fkance. 



France, without any special endemic character, unites within her 

 limits portions of several biological regions, thus requiring from her 

 naturalists the study of all the European floras and faunas in order 

 rightly to understand her own. The greater part of her surface 



7* 2 



