Reprinted from “ The Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine,’ Second Series, Vol. xii.] 
September, 1901). 205 
BALEARIC INSECTS. 
INTRODUCTION, BY EDWARD B. POULTON, MA., F.R.S., 
Hope Professor of Zoology in the University of Oxford, 
Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. 
Having recently paid two visits to Majorea, the first in the spring 
of 1900, the second in the summer of the present year, I hope that 
the material obtained may be gradually worked out by specialists, and 
published. Thus a systematic beginning, at any rate, of the study of 
the little known insect fauna of Majorea will be undertaken. The 
results of a couple of days’ collecting in Minorea, April 6th and 7th, 
1900, are also included, together with material obtained later, in the 
summer of the same year, and kindly sent me by Sef. Mauricio 
Hernandez of Mahon. The insect fauna of Minorca is, however, 
comparatively well known, especially the Coleoptera, a very complete 
list having been published (Mahon, 1872) by the late Dr. D. Francisco 
Cardona of Mahon. 
The island of Majorca is about 60 miles in greatest length by 
40 in greatest breadth. From the zoological aspect it presents three 
types of country :— 
(1) The level plains, which are cultivated with remarkable dili- 
gence, so that the indigenous and derived insect faunas are almost 
confined to the road-sides, the beds of streams, occasional gardens, 
the neighbourhood of irrigation tanks, and the very few fields in 
which wild flowers have been permitted to remain. 
(2) The mountains, chiefly developed and loftiest along the 
straight N.W. coast of the island, but also rising from the plains in 
isolated ridges and rounded masses. Here too the slopes are terraced 
and cultivated with extraordinary care, but numerous flowers exist, 
especially in the neighbourhood of the corn fields, and woods of low 
trees are to be found in many places. The higher steeper slopes are 
largely made up of bare rock with a scanty vegetation. A coarse 
grass growing in tufts is fairly abundant on some of the slopes. Some 
of the hills are almost covered with the palmetto, affording very barren 
ground to the collector. Pigs and goats are fed where the ground is 
not cultivated, even on the steepest and rockiest hill-sides. 
(3) The low marshy land lying along the N.E. coast, bordering 
a portion of the circumference of the bays of Alcudia and Pollensa. 
This is probably the richest collecting ground in the island, and it has 
been unfortunately very little worked. Mr. Oldfield Thomas and 
Mr. R. I. Pocock collected for a day at Albufera, near the Bay of 
Aleudia, in the spring of 1900, and found the insects more abundant 
C71 
