Die Damaster-Coptolabrus-Gruppe der Gattung Carabus. 83 



Lewis ^) schreibt: 



„For tlie study of certain forms of Coleoptera which are limited in 

 their distribution , the fauna of Japan is convenient , in as much as the 

 country Covers over fourteen degrees of latitude, and the greatest breadth 

 of unbroken land is barely five degrees in the widest part. The Archi- 

 pelago is cut up into sections by dividing seas and straits : in the north 

 by the Tangar Strait, in the south by the incursions of the island sea, 

 while the maine island in latitude 35^ is geographically much broken up 

 by the Owari Bay, Biwa Lake, and Wakasa Bay, and over this last line 

 many of the southern species do not pass. Let us consider the position 

 which Damaster — an endemic form of Carabus — takes in a country 

 thus topographically divided, and see how changes of climate modify 

 varieties and create species. In Kushin, the southern part, we find a 

 large black species of nocturnal habits raeasuring 29 lines ; a species of 

 such vigorous and substantial habit that we almost instinctively look on 

 it as the father of every Damaster. The forests it inhabits are those with 

 sommers of sub- tropica! heat and length, ushered in by heavy rains, with 

 little thermal change day or night. The trees there attain considerable 

 height and girth, and through many groves the sun scarcely penetrates. 

 A few miles north-ward of this district, near the well-known volcans of 

 Simabara — the summit of which is sometimes in mild-winter capped with 

 snow — the Valleys are composed of decaying lava, and on such a soll 

 the trees are of more moderate growth , and easely penetrated by the 

 cold wiuds of the higher altitudes. Here, although only a few miles from 

 Nagasaki, are great climatic changes, and we find D. Lewisi, a half-starved 

 form, so to speak, of D. blapioides. We then pass considerably more to 

 the eastward, but only l^/g degrees north, to Hiogo. Again we find the 

 soil, climate, and Vegetation correspond with Simbara, and the same specimen 

 of Damaster. Crossing the Biwa-lake-barrier into the Yokohama district 

 we come to quite a diflferent form of insect, and we need not look far 

 for reasons of change: we find D. pandurns , a clumsily-formed species, 

 in wbich much of the elegance of the outline in the genus is lost, and 

 the elytral mucrones almost obsolete, and with these changes colour first 

 appears. The winters of Yokohama are comparatively severe ; snow not 

 infrequent, and cold winds from adjacent snow-covered mountains continual, 

 penetrating the forest lands , and the soil becomes ice-bound, sometimes 

 for days together. On a mountain in latitude 36'' 30' I have taken a 

 variety of this species with an almost bright blue thorax, and here, on 

 the 15th June last, I traversed snow at intervals, some feet in thickness, 

 under the trees. 



The next species is D. Fortunei, found in lat. 38** 30', on Awasima. 

 by the late Dr. Adams , and I will remark three things regarding it : 

 the (J has the tarsi (in common with the next two species) very slightly 

 dilated, thorax is bronzed, and I presume it inhabits a colder climate 



1) Geoege Lewis, On the distribution of Damaster, with description 

 of a new species, in: Entomol. monthly Mag., Vol. 17, 1880 — 1881. 



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