1 



2^0 KELP COVERED ROCKS, [chap, xi^ 



stones. The vegetable feeding Chrysomelidce, so eminently 

 characteristic of the Tropics, are here almost entirely 

 absent ; * I saw very few flies, butterflies, or bees, and no 

 crickets or orthoptera. In the pools of water I found but 

 few aquatic beetles, and not any fresh-water shells : Suc- 

 cinea at first appears an exception ; but here it must be 

 called a terrestrial shell, for it lives on the damp herbage 

 far from water. Land-shells could be procured only in the 

 same alpine situations with the beetles. I have already 

 contrasted the climate as well as the general appearance of 

 Tierra del Fuego with that of Patagonia ; and the difference 

 is strongly exemplified in the entomology. I do not believe 

 they have one species in common ; certainly the general 

 character of the insects is widely different. 



If we turn from the land to the sea, we shall find the latter 

 as abundantly stocked with living creatures as the former 

 is poorly so. In all parts of the world a rocky and partially 

 protected shore perhaps supports, in a given space, a greater 

 number of individual animals than any other station. There 

 is one marine production, which from its importance is 

 worthy of a particular history. It is the kelp, or Macrocystis 

 pyrifera. This plant grows on every rock from low-water 

 mark to a great depth, both on the outer coast and within 

 the channels. t I believe, during the voyages of the Adven- 

 ture and Beaglsy not one rock near the surface was dis- 

 covered which was not buoyed by this floating weed. The 

 good service it thus affords to vessels navigating near this 

 stormy land is evident ; and it certainly has saved many a 

 one from being wrecked. I know few things more sur- 

 prising than to see this plant growing and flourishing 

 amidst those great breakers of the western ocean, which no 

 mass of rock, let it be ever so hard, can long resist. The 



* I believe I must except one alpine Haltica, and a single specimen ol a 

 Melasoma. Mr. Waterhouse informs me, that of the Harpalidse there are 

 eight or nine species — the forms of the greater number being very peculiar ; of 

 Heteromera, four or five species ; of Rhyncophora six or seven ; and of the 

 following families one species in each : Staphylinida, Elateridae, Cebrionidae, 

 Melonlonthidae. The species in the other orders are even fewer. In all 

 the orders, the scarcity of the individuals is even more remarkable than 

 that of the species. Most of the Coleoptera have been carefully described by 

 Mr. Waterhouse in the "Annals of Natural History," 



t Its geographical range is remarkably wide : it is found from the extreme 

 southern islets near Cape Horn, as far north on the eastern coast (according to 

 information given me by Mr. Stokes) as lat 43* — but on the western coast, as 

 Dr. Hooker tells me, it extends to the Rio San Francisco, in California, and 

 perhaps even to Kamtschatka. We thus have an immense ran^e in latitude ; 

 and as Cook, who must have been well acquainted with the species, found it at 

 Kerjfuelen Land, no less than 140* in longitude. 



