INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. IX 



organic nature *, it is impossible to avoid surprise that the Coleoptera 

 should have been thus dealt with in so voluminous a History as that of 

 MM. Webb and Berthelot. I would by no means, however, wish it to 

 be assumed that I consider the present enumeration as even approach- 

 ing to a complete one. On the contrary, indeed, I do not venture to 

 suppose that I have gleaned more than the firstfruits ; yet I hope that 

 it will at least constitute a basis (sufficiently accurate, as far as it 

 goes) for a more perfect treatise to be built upon. And although I feel 

 that there is yet much, very much, to be done in every island of the 

 cluster, I think nevertheless I may safely anticipate that the general 

 catalogue, at all events, will be found to give a really true (though 

 approximate) idea of the Canarian Coleoptera as a ivTiole. With re- 

 spect to the separate lists of each island, the great practical difficulty 

 of filling them up should be borne in mind. Indeed to reach the re- 

 moter islands at all, and to omit none of them moreover in a widelj^ 

 scattered assemblage, the extremes of which are removed from each 

 other by nearly 200 miles of stormy ocean, is no easy taskf; there- 

 fore how much more to deal with each of them as a distinct country, 

 and to begin afresh in every case (which necessarily involves a con- 

 siderable amount of time) to collect its commonest productions ! In 

 the Canarian Group, where the islands are seven in number, the labour 

 has been the same as in the exploration of seven countries (of similar 

 extent) ; and it will consequently be seen that, whilst the species 

 which I have recorded for the entire archipelago is 930, the asterisks 

 (in the Topographical Index) for the islands collectively — which, so 

 far as the ivorlc of observation is concerned, might have been indicative 

 of so many separate species — amount to 2043. It may be interesting 

 to notice the proportions thus arrived at for the species hitherto ob- 

 served in the several islands : — 



* There is, in the ' Histoire Naturelle des lies Canaries' above cited, a 

 Chapter, devoted to what are called "philosophical speculations," in which 

 reasons are given why insects cannot be common at the Canaries. A great deal 

 is there said about the trade-winds, moisture, the general state of the atmosphere, 

 &c. ; but I must profess myself quite incompetent to understand it. It would 

 have been better to have gone out into the open country and observed facts. I 

 can only say that I chose this plan, unA found insects in profusion. 



t MM. Webb and Berthelot appear never to have set foot on Hierro ; and so 

 dispose of it summarily by saying that it has no harbours, no rivers, no water 

 of any kind — a mere barren rock, insignificant and devoid of interest. For mv 

 own part I found it (in proportion to its size) the most remarkable island of the 

 seven ; and the noble forests with which it is clothed on its western slopes are 

 not to be equalled elsewhere throughout the archipelago. Indeed, apart from 

 every other circumstance, its mere topographical position with respect to the re- 

 mainder of the Group invests Hierro with a charm peculiarly its own. 



