288 The Naturalist in Nicaragua 
towards, if not in, Honduras. Mr. Salvin says, “ What I 
suspect to be the case, though I cannot as yet bring evidence 
to prove it, is, that the forests of Chontales spread unin- 
terruptedly into Costa Rica, but that towards the north and 
north-west a decided break occurs, and that this break 
determines the range of the prevalent Costa Rican and 
Guatemalan forest forms.” + I can confirm Mr. Salvin’s 
supposition. The San Juan river forms no greater break in 
the forest than a dozen other rivers that run through it and 
fall into the Atlantic. But a decided interruption does occur 
to the north-west. It is found in the valleys of Humuya 
and Goascoran in Honduras, which, along with the central 
plain of Comayagua, constitute a great transverse valley 
running north and south from sea to sea, and cutting com- 
pletely through the chain of the Cordilleras.2, The highest 
point of this pass is 2850 feet above the sea, and the country 
around is composed of undulating savannahs and plains 
covered with grass. The Gulf of Honduras, cutting deeply 
into the continent, also plays an important part in preventing 
the intermingling of the faunas of the two sub-provinces, but 
the principal barrier is the termination of the great Atlantic 
forest north-westward, which even at Cape Gracias begins to 
give place to plains and savannahs next the coast. 
My entomological collections were much more complete 
than my collections of birds, especially those of the butterflies 
and beetles.2 Mr. W. C. Hewitson has described twenty-five 
new species, but no list of the whole of the butterflies known 
from Nicaragua has yet been published. In Coleoptera I 
made large collections, but the extensive families of the 
Elateride, Lamellicorns, and others are still uncatalogued, 
and very many species remain to be described. The only 
beetles that have been catalogued as yet with sufficient com- 
pleteness to warrant any general conclusions are the Longi- 
1 The Ibis, July 1872, p. 312. 
2 Squier, States of Central America, p. 681. 
8 [The author’s bird and insect collections were purchased at his 
death by Messrs Godman and Salvin who also acquired from Mr. 
H. W. Bates the types and other specimens of coleoptera described by 
him which had not remained in the original collection. These are all 
now in the British Museum, together with the Hewitson bequest, in 
which are many of the lepidoptera types. It may not be out of place 
to add that Mr. Hewitson left in his will the sum of two hundred 
pounds to Belt in recognition of the way in which the latter’s collec- 
tions had been placed at his service.] 
