GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF INSECTS. 487 
things seldom registered by travellers that take the 
trouble to collect insects ; who, if they specify generally 
the country in which any individual was found, think 
they have done enough. But to say that an insect was 
taken in India, China, New Holland, and North or 
South America, — when we consider the vast "extent of 
those regions, — is saying little of what one wishes to 
know even with respect to its habitat. You must re- 
gard therefore, after all, what I have been able to col- 
lect, — and for which I am greatly indebted to the labours 
of my few but able precursors in this walk, — as merely 
approximations to an outline, rather than as a correct 
map of insect Geography. 
Amongst the numerous obligations that he conferred 
upon Natural History, Linne was the first Naturalist 
who turned his attention to the Geographical Distribu- 
tion of its objects, especially that of the Vegetable King- 
dom 3 : and the accomplished traveller Baron Hum- 
boldt, by the observations he made on this subject in 
the course o£ his peregrinations in tropical America, 
has furnished the Botanist with a clue which, duly fol- 
lowed, will enable him to perfect that part of his science; 
an end to which the learned observations of Messrs. 
R. Brown and Decandolle have greatly contributed b . 
With regard to animals, Mr. White, so long ago as 
1773, had observed that they, as well as plants, might 
with propriety be arranged geographically c : and in 1 778 
Fabricius in his Philosophia Entomologica applied the 
principle to insects d . Nearly forty years elapsed before 
a Linn. Philos. Botan. § 334. 
b Linn. Trans, x. 20 — . &c. Diet, des Scicnc. Nat. xviii. 
e Sclborne i. 173. d Philos. Entomolog. ix. § 20. 
