PREFACE. 



CONSIDERING that scarcely more than a year has elapsed since 

 the publication (by the Trustees of the British Museum) of 

 my volume on the Coleopterous insects of the Canaries, 

 I should have been content to let the subject rest for 

 awhile, had not the recent arrival of fresh material from those 

 islands demanded my immediate attention. The material 

 alluded to is the result of the late researches of the Messrs. 

 Crotch; and it is so extensive and important, that I felt it 

 would not be possible to do it complete justice without a 

 thorough revision of the entire catalogue into which the new 

 species would have to be incorporated. 



With this somewhat tedious prospect before me, I began 

 to consider whether it might not be desirable to take the 

 opportunity of comparing critically, at the same time, inter se, 

 all the Coleoptera which have hitherto been detected in those 

 Atlantic Groups ; for the Madeiran fauna had been steadily 

 increasing since the appearance (in 1857) of my Madeiran 

 Catalogue, and even the little rocks of the Salvages so 

 remote, and difficult of access had been adding their quota 

 to the general list. True it is that the greater number of the 

 novelties thus gradually brought to light, both in the Madeiras 

 and the Salvages, had been described by myself, from time to 

 time, in our various scientific periodicals, and thus far there- 



