GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF INSECTS. 487 



things seldom registered by travellers that take the 

 trouble to collect insects ; who, if they specify generally 

 the country in which any individual was found, think 

 they have done enough. But to say that an insect was 

 taken in India, China, New Holland, and North or 

 South America, when we consider the vast extent of 

 those regions, is saying little of what one wishes to 

 know even with respect to its habitat. You must re- 

 gard therefore, after all, what I have been able to col- 

 lect, and for which I am greatly indebted to the labours 

 of my few but able precursors in this walk, as merely 

 approximations to an outline, rather than as a correct 

 map of insect Geography. 



Amongst the numerous obligations that he conferred 

 upon Natural History, Linne was the first Naturalist 

 who turned his attention to the Geographical Distribu- 

 tion of its objects, especially that of the Vegetable King- 

 dom 3 : and the accomplished traveller Baron Hum- 

 boldt, by the observations he made on this subject in 

 the course of his peregrinations in tropical America, 

 has furnished the Botanist with a clue which, duly fol- 

 lowed, will enable him to perfect that part of his science; 

 an end to which the learned observations of Messrs. 

 R. Brown and Decandolle have greatly contributed 5 . 

 With regard to animals, Mr. White, so long ago as 

 1773, had observed that they, as well as plants, might 

 with propriety be arranged geographically c : and in 1 778 

 Fabricius in his Philosophia Entomologica applied the 

 principle to insects d . Nearly forty years elapsed before 



a Linn. Philos. Botan. 334. 



b Linn. Trans, x. 20 . &c. Diet, des Scicnc. Nat. xviii. 



e Selborne i. 173. d Philos. Entomolog. ix. 20. 



