ls:!l.l GREAT SEA- WEED. 227 



of Magellan, where the country retains the character of Patagonia; 

 Imt within the damp and cold limit of Tierra del Fuego not one 

 occurs. That the climate would not have suited some of the 

 orders, such as lizards, might have been foreseen; but with 

 respect to frogs, this was not so obvious. 



Beetles occur in very small numbers : it was long before I could 

 believe that a country as large as Scotland, covered with vegetable 

 productions and with a variety of stations, could be so unproductive. 

 The few which I found were alpine species (Harpalidse and Hete- 

 romida?) living under stones. The vegetable-feeding Chrysomelida), 

 so eminently characteristic of the Tropics, are hero almost entirely 

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

 Orthoptera. In the pools of water I found but a few aquatic beetles, 

 and not any fresh-water shells: Succinea at first appears an excep- 

 tion ; but here it must be called a terrestrial shell, for it lives 

 on the damp herbage far from water. Land-shells could be pro- 

 cured 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. 1 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 pyrifcra. This plant grows 

 on every rock from low-water mark to a great depth, both on the 

 outer coast and within the channels.! I believe, during tho 



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

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

 eight or nine species the forms of the greater number being very pecu- 

 liar; of Heteromera, four or five species; of Rhyncophora, six or seven ; 

 and of the following families one species in each : Staphylinidse, Elate- 

 ridze, Cebrionidse, Melolonthidce. The species in the otiier 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 Colcoptera have been 

 carefully described by Mr. Waterhouse in the Annals of Nat. Hist. 



f Its geographical range is remarkably wide ; it is found from the 

 extreme southern islets near Cape Horn, as far north ou the eastern coast 



