296 Bibliographical Notices. 
bably no great results would be obtained from them. The materials 
at Mr. Wollaston’s disposal were, however, sufficient to bring out 
some very interesting results, 
The first of these is, that the relative proportions of the different 
great groups of Coleoptera in these remote islands is nearly the 
same as in the more fruitful regions of the Madeiran and Canarian 
groups, with the exception that the Heteromera and Rhynchophora 
exactly change places in the series, and that the Eucerata (Longi- 
corns) are, as far as our author is aware, entirely unrepresented. 
The comparative inferiority of the Rhynchophora may perhaps be 
due, as Mr. Wollaston seems to think, to the improvident destruction 
of the timber by the inhabitants; and the same cause would also, to 
a great extent, account for the absence of the Longicorn Beetles. 
Considering the arid nature of the islands, it is a little remarkable 
that whilst the Philhydrida and Hydradephaga hold the same rela-. 
tive position in the numerical scale, their actual proportion to the 
whole number of species is greater in the Cape Verde than in the 
more northern islands ; for we have 7 Hydradephaga and 6 water- 
loving Philhydrida in the former, against 29 and 20 in the latter, 
the totals being about in the proportion of 28 to 145. 
Nor is it only in these statistical results that the two sets of islands, 
which Mr. Wollaston has subjected to examination, agree; even the 
exponents of Coleopterous groups, although not very frequently 
identical, are generally so nearly allied that Mr. Wollaston seems to 
think that it would be most natural to regard the fauna of all the. 
islands as forming a whole, differing in certain details in the more 
distant islands, but characterized throughout by a similarity of type. 
Thus, although the predominance of Heteromera would seem at first _ 
sight to indicate that nearer African relationship which might be 
inferred from the position of the islands, we find on inspection of 
the list that the types are, for the most part, like those of the more 
northern islands. It is to be observed, however, that, notwith- 
standing this similarity of the types which are represented in the 
Cape Verdes to those prevailing in the more northern clusters, Mr. 
Wollaston remarks upon the total absence in the former of types 
highly characteristic of the latter. This, however, as he points out, 
is probably the result of distance, assisted perhaps by the breaking 
up of the province into such a number of small islands. 
Of truly tropical forms Mr. Wollaston enumerates only three, 
namely, Dineutus cereus, Diplognatha gagates, and Aspidomorpha 
cincta. 
Of the species enumerated by Mr. Wollaston a great number seem 
to occupy the same position in relation to other known species which 
characterized so many of those catalogued by him in his former » 
work ; that is to say, they differ so slightly that, but for the differ- 
ence of habitat, they would perhaps hardly be regarded as species. 
All these are carefully indicated by Mr. Wollaston in his geogra- 
phical table by means of arrows leading to the name of the probable 
derivative species; and it will be a task for some Darwinist here- 
after to work carefully over Mr. Wollaston’s indications of this” 
