No. VII.— DERMAPTERA. 



By' Malcolm Burr, D.Sc, F.L.S., F.E.S. 



(Text-figures 1 — 6.) 



Read 21 si! April, 1910. 



Our knowledge of the Dei-maptera of the Seychelles has hitherto been confined to 

 a brief paper by de Bormans (Ann. Soc. ent. Fi\, 1895, pp. 387, 388) upon the material 

 obtained there by M. Charles Alluaud. Only four species are recorded, which must be 

 reduced to three, since we now sink one of them as a synonym of another, and that is 

 a cosmopolitan species. On this meagre material, the author was able to state that the 

 Seychelles Dermaptera-fauna has more in common with Ceylon than with that of Africa. 

 This conclusion is not vitiated by the incorrect determination of one of the three remaining 

 species, since de Bormans mistook one Singalese species for another inhabiting the same 

 island. His fourth species is also probably incorrectly determined, but is certainly purely 

 Oriental. 



The Gardiner-Scott collection consists of twelve species. From a zoogeographical 

 point of view, we may omit three of these, namely Labidura riparia Pall, which is 

 cosmopolitan, Labia curvicauda Motsch., which is nearly so, and Chelisoches niorio 

 Fabr., of which a single specimen was brought from the Farquhar Atoll ; it is moreover 

 abundant throughout the Oriental Region, and the Pacific islands ; it is still artificially 

 extending its distribution, since it appears to have obtained foothold on the coast of 

 East Africa, and has been transported by shipping even to England. 



Another species, Borellla stall Dohrn, is distributed throughout the Oriental Region 

 from Java to India, is common in Madagascar, and has also obtained a foothold on the 

 East Coast of Africa. 



The three new species may be, I think, safely regarded as peculiar to the Seychelles, 

 as they appear to occur under purely natural conditions, and one at least, Brachylabis 

 scotti, is a member of an archaic apterous group which is represented throughout the 

 tropical world by isolated species. 



Of the remaining species, Labia alluaudi and Echinosoma bolivari are known only 

 from the Madagascar group of islands ; Platylabia thoraclca Dohrn is a truly Oriental 

 species. There remain two, Psalis d 'oh nil Kirby, and Labia pilicornis Motsch.: of these 

 the former is only known from Ceylon and Travancore and the latter is supposed to be 

 peculiar to Ceylon. 



So we see that de Bormans' conclusions, though based on totally insufficient evidence, 

 are not far wrong. 



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