Ixv 



independent evidence to render such an improbable supposition 

 acceptable. If the Azores date the origin of their insect population 

 from a remote epoch when the}^ were connected with Europe, 

 we should expect to find that almost all the species have since 

 become modified, and that these islands would offer us a larger 

 propoi"tion of highly specialized and ultra-indigenous forms than 

 Madeira itself. The exact contrary, however, is the fact, for, out 

 of more than 200 species, only about sixteen are peculiar. 



Taking the geodephagous group, the species of which, both 

 Mr. Murray and Mr. Wollaston believe, are least liable to be 

 introduced by man, we find that two only are peculiar, while six- 

 teen are European. The Rhynchophora only equal the Geode- 

 phaga in number of species, and seven of these are peculiar. 

 Leaving out a large number of species which have, there is little 

 doubt, been introduced through human agency, there remain 

 more than 100 species identical with those of Europe and the 

 Atlantic islands, while onlj^ fourteen are peculiar. These facts 

 impl^' that the insects, as a whole, have been brought to the 

 islands through natural causes, and that the process is probably 

 still going on. On looking to Physical Maps for information, 

 however, a difficulty appears ; for the ocean currents, as well as 

 the prevalent regular winds, are all from the westward, while only 

 four of the beetles are American, and these being all wood-borers 

 have no doubt been brought by the Gulf-stream where they have 

 not been introduced by man. Fortunately, however, we have a 

 means of getting over this difficulty ; for our member, Mr. F. Du 

 Cane Godman, who has given us the most recent and accurate 

 information on the natural history of these islands, informs us (in 

 his paper on the Birds of the Azores in the ' Ibis' for 18G6) that 

 the stormy atmosphere, to which we have seen that Madeira owes 

 so many of its peculiarities, is still more marked a feature of the 

 Azores, where violent storms from all points of the coynpass are 

 frequent, and annually bring to their shores numbers of European 

 birds. As a natural result of this constant influx, the birds of the 

 islands are, all but two, of European species ; and, what is very 

 important, they decrease in numbers from the eastern to the 

 western islands of the group. This is just what we should expect 

 if they are stragglers from the eastern continent ; but if they are 

 the descendants of those which inhabited the country before its 

 dismemberment, there would be no meaning in such a diminution. 



