COLEOPTEROUS INSECTS. 91 



might be supposed to have an influence on animals, 

 present the most striking differences in their insect 

 productions. Latreille has observed that the coun- 

 tries most fruitful in insects, are those in which 

 vegetation is richest and most speedily renewed. 

 South America, which is so prolific in 



all rare and beauteous things that fly 



Through the pure element, 



furnishes a greater number of Coleoptera than any 

 other country. It comprehends every variety of 

 soil and climate, and offers all the other conditions 

 that tend to the increase of organized beings. Its 

 intertropical regions are watered by many sea-like 

 rivers, and clothed with a luxuriance of vegetation 

 scarcely equalled elsewhere ; its mountain ranges, 

 rising far above the limit of perpetual snow, are the 

 sources of endless variation in climate and temper- 

 ature ; its elevated plateaus enjoy the temperate air 

 of a northern latitude, while the climates of Spain, 

 Italy, and France, and even of Norway and Sweden, 

 are successively presented to us in our progress to- 

 wards the Straits of Magalhaens. Extensive wastes 

 of arid sand likewise occur, similar to those that 

 cover so large a portion of the African continent ; 

 and the Pampas or Llanos (levels) stretching in a 

 dead flat, like the illimitable expanse of the ocean, 

 over an extent of country equal to a fourth part of 

 Europe, and so far removed, in their untrodden so- 

 litudes, from the turmoil of ordinary scenes, that 

 by the earliest European visitors they were styled. 



