294 THE entomologist's record. 



in this migration, species succeeded species as the gradual secular rise 

 of temperatue made the advance for each possible. It is also conceiv- 

 able that these few isolated species which we find restricted either to the 

 counties south of the Thames Valley, or even quite to the littoral of 

 the English Channel, were the rear guard of this migration, and the 

 last arrivals which the break of land connection between England and 

 France allowed. Had that connection continued longer it is possible 

 that other species, not numbered in our fauna, but which are common 

 enough in northern France and the Channel Islands, might have 

 maintained a permanent foothold here, but of this there is no evidence 

 and the very narrow range of many species that did arrive made the 

 supposition doubtful. As regards the immediate origin of this group 

 it seems obvious that northern France and Belgium furnished such 

 species as we find now attached to restricted localities along the coast 

 lines of Kent, Sussex and Hampshire, but as we proceed westward and 

 especially when we consider the fauna of the south and south-west of 

 Ireland, the hypothesis of a former vast continental land extension 

 which once united Cornwall, Kerry, Brittany and the Iberian 

 Peninsula, forces itself upon our attention. Such a continental area 

 may have sustained a fauna differing in many respects from that of 

 regions more to the east, and explaining to some extent faunistic 

 features which we recognise in the extreme west of England and south 

 of Ireland, and which perhaps penetrated some distance along a river 

 valley now represented by the Bristol Channel. This is the group 

 which I have ventured to designate as a fourth and last division of 

 our coleoptera. It is emphasised especially in Ireland possibly more 

 in flora than in fauna, and in the Mollusca such a species as the 

 spotted slug of Kerry {Geomalacus maculatus) undoubtedly represents it. 



It seems possible that even while some obstacle, such as an 

 immense lake filling the bed of what is now the Irish Sea, cut Ireland 

 off from England and Wales more to the north, this south-westerly 

 land extension may have been in existence and thus explain a certain 

 bifurcation which we seem to trace in the lines of distribution of some 

 species such as that of Pi/roptenis a[finis, which has only occurred in 

 Nottinghamshire and in Kerry, or Lytta resicatoria found occasionally, 

 but only in the south-eastern counties of England, but which much to 

 the surprise of entomologists was recorded a few years ago as having 

 been taken near Roscommon in Ireland. A similar case is that of 

 Nebria complanata which occurs on the coast of Wexford and of the 

 Bristol Channel. Other species seem to have had a range more 

 exclusively western as Bliojtaloinesites tardyi and Carabus intricaUis, 

 although the former has penetrated as far north as Belfast and the 

 west of Scotland. 



Otiorrhynrhus auropunctatus is a more enigmatical insect as, so far 

 as we know at present, it seems confined to the eastern coast of 

 Ireland, but as it is unknown in Great Britain at all I should feel 

 inclined to associate it with what is known as the Iberian element in 

 the Irish fauna, or to what I have designated as the fourth group in 

 these notes. 



In any general consideration of this group it is obvious that the 

 fauna of the Scilly Islands should be significant. Of their cole- 

 opterous inhabitants, however, our knowledge is meagre and even 

 disappointing, they have certainly never been adequately explored, 



