176 FAUNA HAWAIIENSIS 



The number of specimens on which the following account is based is about 6500. 

 By far the larger part of this material was obtained by Mr Perkins while working for 

 the Committee. But I have also received specimens from other sources. I have to 

 thank Mr Albert Koebele, the economic entomologist of the Hawaiian Islands, for some 

 very interesting specimens. Mr Perkins has recently sent me specimens collected by 

 himself and friends. And Mr Blackburn presented me with a set of the specimens 

 described long ago by him. 



Before entering on the systematic consideration of the genera and species, I may 

 be pardoned for explaining the system I have adopted. It is indeed desirable that 

 I should do this as the system is an unusual one, and some apology, as well as explana- 

 tion, is demanded. 



It is evident from the statistics I have already given that this part of the Hawaiian 

 Fauna is quite apart from that of other parts of the world. We have no clue to its source. 

 It is also clear that this isolated and precinctive fauna must have existed for an enormous 

 period of time under most peculiar conditions. A small area separated almost completely 

 from the rest of the world, but divided into islands of a wildly mountainous character, 

 subjected for a vast, though uncomputed period' to the most extensive volcanic disturb- 

 ances, while the history of the separate islands as to these disturbances is, chronologically, 

 widely difterent — such an area offers biological conditions almost without parallel on the 

 surface of our globe. Of such a precinct every philosopher must like to know the 

 history. Its Fauna and Flora are to be looked upon as amongst the most interesting 

 of the biological experiments of Nature. 



Taxonomy. A preliminary scrutiny revealed the fact that these Hawaiian 

 Carabidae are as regards their main divisions quite concordant with those of other 

 parts of the world, but that they exhibit in an exaggerated form certain features 

 that elsewhere are comparatively rare. The chief of these are (i) flightlessness, (2) a 

 diminished chaetotaxy. 



I have therefore used these two characters to an extent that has not been done 

 by those who have treated of continental faunas, and I have relied on them, almost 

 exclusively, for generic characters. 



I am wfell aware that this system — as a system — has certain disadvantages. These 

 indeed I hope to make evident in the following pages. But now that I have completed 

 this part of the Hawaiian work I am of opinion that I have done right in adopting 

 it. It at any rate brings the systematic divisions on to one plane with the bionomic 

 aspects, and I think that by adhering to it my successors — and I wish I could hope the)- 

 will be many — will find the interest of their work enhanced. 



I may perhaps make the merits and demerits of this system clear by saying that 

 under it an individual, by a simple process of discontinuous variation — such as there is 



' Dana, who studied these islands, considered them to be of enormous antii|uity, but decHned venturing 

 on any specific estimate of their age. 



