September, 1901]. ' 205 



BALEAEIC INSECTS. 

 INTRODUCTION, BY EDWAUD B. POULTON, M A., F.B.S., 



Hope Professor of Zoology in the University of Oxford, 

 Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. 



Having recently paid two visits to Majorca, the first in the spring 

 of 1900, the second in the summer of the present year, I hope that 

 the material obtained may be gradually worked out by specialists, and 

 published. Thus a systematic beginning, at any rate, of the study of 

 the little known insect fauna of Majorca will be undertaken. The 

 results of a couple of days' collecting in Minorca, April Gth and 7th, 

 1900, are also included, together with material obtained later, in the 

 summer of the same year, and kindly sent me by Seii. Mauricio 

 Hernandez of Mahon. The insect fauna of Minorca is, however, 

 comparatively well known, especially the CoJeoptera, a very complete 

 list having been published (Mahon, 1872) by the late Dr. D. Francisco 

 Cardona of Mahon. 



The island of Majorca is about 60 miles in greatest length by 

 40 in greatest breadth. From the zoological aspect it presents three 

 types of country : — 



(1) The level plains, which are cultivated with remarkable dili- 

 gence, so that the indigenous and derived insect faunas are almost 

 confined to the road-sides, the beds of streams, occasional gardens, 

 the neighbourhood of irrigation tanks, and the very few fields in 

 which wild flow^ers have been permitted to remain. 



(2) The mountains, chiefly developed and loftiest along the 

 straight N.W. coast of the island, but also rising from the plains in 

 isolated ridges and rounded masses. Here too the slopes are terraced 

 and cultivated wath extraordinary care, but numerous flowers exist, 

 especially in the neighbourhood of the corn fields, and woods of low 

 trees are to be found in many places. The higher steeper slopes are 

 largely made up of bare rock with a scanty vegetation. A coarse 

 grass growing in tufts is fairly abundant on some of the slopes. Some 

 of the hills are almost covered with the palmetto, affording very barren 

 ground to the collector. Pigs and goats are fed where the ground is 

 not cultivated, even on the steepest and rockiest hill-sides. 



(3) The low marshy land lying along the N.E. coast, bordering 

 a portion of the circumference of the bays of Alcudia and Pollensa. 

 This is probably the richest collecting ground in the island, and it has 

 been unfortunately very little worked. Mr. Oldfield Thomas and 

 Mr. l^ T. Pocock collected for a day at Albufera, near tlie Bay of 

 Alcudia, in the spring of 1900, and found the insects more abundant 



