494 Alexander Goodman More Scientific Papers. 



has more than twice as many of them as Scotland. (*) It is believed this 

 will be still further confirmed by a comparison drawn between Great 

 Britain and any central portion of the European Continent. 



The readers of Forbes's Essay will find, in the relative numbers of 

 Highland and Lowland species, nothing but what agrees with the 

 hypothesis that our Alpine Fauna is the more ancient, and has 

 descended to us from a period when the summits of our mountains 

 existed as islands, or members of a chain of islands, communicating 

 with Scandinavia across the " Glacial Sea." In such a case we should 

 expect to find the Alpine species few in number, since their area was 

 restricted from the first and its climate boreal : the insects, too, may 

 have been less able than contemporary plants to survive the changes of 

 temperature and the accidents of geological disturbances. On the 

 other hand, the higher numbers of the " British," " English," and 

 " Germanic " Types point to a more recent derivation from the adjoining 

 Continent (**). 



The disproportion, however, among butterflies, between the 

 "Atlantic" and " Germanic " Types, is worthy of attention, in so far 

 as these two nearly agree with Forbes's "Norman" and "North- 

 French " Floras, both of which he supposed (with some reservations) to 

 be still older than the "Scandinavian" or "Highland." Now, the 

 high numbers of the " Germanic " Type, the difficulty of separating it 

 satisfactorily from the "English," together with the fact of its plants 

 being found (some of them abundantly) in the centre of Germany, lead 

 to the conclusion that it is but a branch of, and contemporaneous with, 

 the central European, Forbes's "Great Germanic" Flora. 



Looking, on the contrary, at the " Atlantic " Type, with its fewness 



of insect species ; at the more clearly southern character of its Flora 



(which in great measure consists of plants found towards the Atlantic 



6027 anc ^ Mediterranean coasts, and absent from Germany), and at its being 



'* on our shores further isolated from its original abode, we cannot help 



* The Irish species are thirty- 



six : 



British Type, 20. 

 English Type, 14. f 

 Scottish Type, I. 

 Highland Type, I. 



The Scotch species are thirty- 



three J : 



British Type, 23. 

 English Type, 6. 

 Scottish Type, 3. 

 Highland Type, I. 



Not one is found in either Scotland or Ireland that does not also occur in 

 England. That Ireland, with fewer plants than Scotland, should have more 

 butterflies, shows that the number of the latter is less influenced by western 

 position than might have been expected. || [Printed footnote. W. F. K.] 



(**) To them may be added the Scottish. 



+ 15. Lathonia in Ireland would make it English instead of Germanic, and add one more 

 to the English Type. $ 34. \ 7 . 



II And more by climate or Southern position, as Ireland has twice as many English Type. 



