Bibliographical Notices. 351 



separate itself into 3 natural divisions ; and we shall have, for Ma- 

 deira proper 4/8, for (he Dezertas 87, and for Porto Santo ir)5. 

 Only 8 species have heen hitherto discovered on every island of the 

 cluster — nevertheless 10 more are all hut universal (if indeed, as is 

 ])rol)alile, thev are not so entirely)." We may transfer to our [)ages 

 the following note on one of the prime rarities of the place, the 

 highly interesting genus so aptly named L)euc((Iion hy its describer : 

 a second species from the Salvages, remote rocks in the Atlantic, is 

 described by the author at p. 433, from specimens obtained by his 

 friend T. S. Le.icock, Esq. of Funchal. 



We may mention, that on an island almost antipodal to Madeira, 

 Lord Howe's Island, the late able Naturalist of II. M.S. 'Herald,' 

 IMr. John Macgillivray, found a third species (D. 1 Tf'ot/asfoni, 

 n. s.), or rather a species of a closely allied genus, which may 

 prompt, to the mind of some geologist, an idea beari)ig on the 

 great continent Atlantis, of which the lovely Madeira seems to be 

 one of the few remnants above water. The following extract we 

 copy from p. 430, — it contains all the remarks on Deucalion, — as 

 likely to give the general reader some idea of the attractive nature of 

 the book even to him : — 



" There is no genus, perhaps, throughout all the INIadeiran Co- 

 leoptera,more truly indigenous than Deucalion. Conlined apparently, 

 so far as these islands are concerned, to the remote and almost inac- 

 cessible ridges of the two southern Dezertas, it would seem to bid 

 defiance to the most enthusiastic adventurer who would scale those 

 dangerous heights. Its excessive rarity moreover, even when the 

 localities are attained, must ever im]>art to it a peculiar value in the 

 eyes of a naturalist ; whilst its anomalous structure and sedentary 

 mode of life * give it an additional interest in connexion with that 

 ancient continent of which these ocean ruins, on which for so many 

 ages it has been cut off, are the undoubted witnesses. Approxi- 

 mating in affinity to Parmena and Dorcadion, yet presenting a modi- 

 fication essentially its own, it becomes doubly important in a geogra- 

 phical point of view ; and it was therefore with the greater pleasure 

 that I lately received, from T. S. Leacock, Esq., of Funchal, a second 

 representative from the distant rocks of the Salvages (midway be- 

 tween Madeira and the Canaries), — on which we may almost pro- 

 nounce for certain that an entomologist had never before set foot. 

 Differing widely in specific minutiae, yet agreeing to an identity in 

 everything generic, they offer conjointly the strongest evidence to 

 the quondam existence of many subsidiary links (long since lost, and 

 radiating in all ])robability from some intermediate type) during the 



* " When we consider indeed the apterous nature of Deucalion, its sub- 

 ronnate elytra, and its attaehment (at any rate in the larva state) to the 

 interior of the stems of particular, local plants, or its retiring propensities 

 within the crevices of rocks, we are at once struck with the conviction that, 

 during the enormous interval of time which has elapsed since tlie mightv 

 couvidsious which rent asunder those regions terminated, it has probably 

 never removed m.iuy yards from tlic weather-beaten ledges which it now 

 inhabits." 



