REVIEWS. 309 



seem to have been only partial and sporadic. Thus the bulk of the 

 records in the present list are due entirely to the exertions of Mr. Day 

 and his three friends. 



Now the only object of such a careful enumeration of the Coleoptera 

 of a limited area as we have before us, apart from merely providing a 

 useful manual for collectors, is to increase our knowledge of the 

 distribution and possibly of the derivation of the British fauna, and 

 from this point of view it may be interesting as well as instructive to 

 compare two English areas as dissimilar as may be possible in the 

 same country. For this purpose the county of Kent suggests itself as 

 suitable, Kent differs from Cumberland as widely as regards situation, 

 climate, physiography, geology and flora, as any two counties in 

 England very well can, their only features in common being the 

 possession of a sea coast, and the shore of a wide estuary. 



Now let us see how they differ in their Coleopterous populations as 

 regards the four major groups under review. 



This the following table will briefly show. 



Total Rccordecl Recorded Cumbrian Kentish Recorded 



1333 942 829 187 300 642 



(1) As given in the latest British list, that of Beare and Donisthorpe 1904. 



(2) As given in the " Kent " of the Victoria County Histories. 



Now from these figures many inferences might be drawn on which 

 it is hardly within the scope of this notice to dilate, but at least it 

 demonstrates that the Coleopterous population of these counties is 

 very different. The actual diminution in this distance of about 400 

 miles is not perhaps conspicuously great, being not more than 12% of 

 the major total ; what is undoubtedly more significant is its specific 

 difference — thus in the four groups we are considering, groups which 

 can only be slightly and indirectly affected by a differing flora, we find 

 that of 942 Kentish species, 800 or nearly one third are unrecorded 

 from Cumberland, but that these are replaced by 187 species similarly 

 unrecorded from Kent. In many cases whole Southern genera are un- 

 represented by a single Northern species, thus in Ueodephana, 18 

 genera recorded from Kent are unknown in Cumberland, while only 2 

 Cumbrian genera are unknown from the Southern county. 



No doubt more than one interpretation might be placed on these 

 salient facts, and it seems incontestable that some considerable 

 influence must be attributed to so great a climatic and physiographical 

 disparity as these counties exhibit, but this is probably not all, it would 

 seem indeed a tenable hypothesis that of these 800 Kentish but not 

 Cumbrian species, many form part of a South-Easterl}^ invasion from 

 the Continent, of course at a time previous to tbe complete insularity 

 of Great Britain, which had died out l)efore it had been able to reach 

 ('iimberland, while a large proportion of the 187 Cumbrian species 

 unknown in Kent may represent the survivors of an antecedent 

 Coleopterous population, extirpated throughout the greater part of 



