INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



DURING the winter of 1856 it was my fortunate lot to visit, in 

 company with my friend John Gray, Esq., the country of Brazil. 

 Several months were spent by us in travelling through parts of the 

 province of Rio Janeiro. Our journey was undertaken with the 

 simple object of seeing with our own eyes those glories of Nature, 

 of which Mansfield and Kingsley, and especially Humboldt, have 

 so graphically written, and of investigating (so far as such a brief 

 visit would permit us) the insect life of the tropics ; and, truly, the 

 reality far surpassed even our sanguine expectations. Everything 

 that we saw was to us not only new, but of surpassing beauty; 

 forest and sea- shore, bare rock and grassy glade, all seemed as 

 fairy-land, and this fairy-land marvellously teemed with life. At 

 the present moment, the recollections of that visit, even amidst the 

 comforts of an English home, and the great interest that attaches 

 to the daily work of a Clergyman, leave only the sincere regret 

 that it was necessarily so- brief, and therefore so unproductive, 

 comparatively, of practical results. Eor any one who has time 

 and opportunity at his disposal, and who has in any degree an 

 appreciation of the beauties of the works of the Great Creator, I 

 know of no expedition that would be more full of interest or more 

 profitable than a visit to this, or some similar subtropical or tro- 

 pical region : the influence of such a visit must be healthy ; it is 

 intensely humbling, and at the same time, and for the same reason, 

 invigorating. 



To our short visit to Brazil this Monograph owes its origin. When, 

 on our return to England, we endeavoured to ascertain what had 

 been already done by former travellers in systematizing the Insect 

 Fauna of that continent, it was very soon apparent that nearly every 

 group of the Coleoptera of those regions (to which Order we confined 

 our attention, as far as collecting went) was almost entirely unex- 



