350 Bibliographical Notices. 



its size — /Lteyo ftipjXiov, k.t.X. — we could also say that he puhlished 

 so large a work at much too cheap a price, and its plates are printed 

 on too thick paper, though beautifully made and tened ; but the 

 Madeira invalid could not hold even an octavo, so a sumptuous 

 quarto is just as " get-at-able," and the collector, among the towering 

 rocks of Aladeira, would do well to have with him no pocket manual 

 bvit one, for he will find it hard work to " carry" himself over much 

 of the ground. The plates have the advantage of having been en- 

 graved by an able entomologist, ]\Ir. F. Smith, from the fine drawings 

 of Mr. Westwood, that walking cyclopaedia of knowledge in Annulosa. 

 The work is not a mere technical work, — it is filled with passages of 

 great interest to the student of the geographical distribution of 

 animals, and must ever form a prized voliniie in his library, from its 

 completeness and its excellence. It is curious, too, to know that there 

 is no Tiger-beetle in Madeira, though only a short distance from a 

 continent which produces the Manticora, that largest of the family, 

 the ]iale night-loving Platychile, the Algerine Metjacephala, and per- 

 haps fifty species of true Cicindela. It is strange to be told, that in 

 an island with plenty of wood (Madeira means "woody") there is no 

 Biiprestis* , and yet in Africa Btiprestidce of large size and endless 

 variety, from hairy-tufted Jiilodes and felspar-reflecting Sfernocera, 

 to minute Anthaxice and Agrili, abound ; INladagascar having a pecu- 

 liar Buprestidous fauna of its own, full of rare magnificence. Africa 

 is a land of Elateridce, from the great Tetralohus and LeptophyUMs 

 with their leaf-plated antennae, to the genera of smaller size, and yet 

 but one " skip-jack" or " click-beetle" rewarded the assiduity of Mr. 

 Wollaston, and he found that Elater in Porto Santo. Africa is the 

 country of Goliath Beetles and of an endless variety of Ce^o/u'a(/<s, which 

 pasture on the sap and sugar and pollen of its flowery vegetation, but 

 this family has only one representative in Madeira, and even that is a 

 very doubtful native. In fact the number of Lamellicorns is so few, 

 that it is strange to one, who would expect Dynastid<s and Lucanidce in 

 so tropical and so well-wooded a country. It seems to abound in Curcu- 

 UonidcE, and some of the genera of these "snouters" are peculiar to it, 

 such as Laparocerus. Its Hetei-omera, its Ptinidce, are abundant. 

 Mr. Wollaston records 539 species of Coleoptera as found in Madeira. 

 These species belong to 228 genera — upwards of 30 of which are not as 

 yet recorded as occurring elsewhere. Of the 13 sections into which 

 the order Coleoptera is subdivided, the Bhynchophora, as we have 

 remarked, contain the largest number of species (110), whilst the 

 Hydradephaga and Eucerata present the smallest, each of them 

 numbering but 8. To Madeira proper belong 4/8 species, to Porto 

 Santo 1.55, to the Dezerta Grande 77, to the Southern Dezerta 31, 

 to the Ilheo Chao 23 ; or to employ Mr. Wollaston' s words in another 

 place, " If we choose to regard the Dezertas as one, the group will 



* Mr. Wollaston, on a fourth visit, has detected a single species of 

 Agrilus, and also one of the family Pselaphida> ; we may here say that we 

 have often contemplated, w ith delight, the fine series of type specimens of 

 " Insecta Madereusia " now preserved in the Ihitisli Museum. 



