CHAPTER XII 



THE COLEOPTERA OF MADEIRA AS ILLUSTRATING THE 

 ORIGIN OF INSULAR FAUNAS 



The Coleopterous fauna of the Atlantic islands is held 

 by some writers to prove that the whole of these islands 

 from the Azores to the Cape de Yerdes, and even to St. 

 Helena, are portions of a submerged continent, occupying 

 a large part of the eastern Atlantic, and which was con- 

 nected with, or formed an extension of, Southern Europe. 

 And, further, that certain isolated affinities of African 

 and American groups are believed to prove two distinct 

 land-connections across the Atlantic, one between Brazil 

 and Equatorial Africa, the other between Patagonia and 

 South Africa. 



The late Mr. Andrew Murray believed that, with the 

 exception of the timber-borers, the presence of the same 

 or closely allied species of beetles in discontiguous 

 countries is a proof that there has been a former con- 

 tinuity of soil, because neither their powers of flight nor 

 their vitality are sufficient to carry them over any con- 

 siderable extent of sea. But in all these respects they 

 are vastly inferior to mammals, reptiles and land-shells ; 

 while their generally small dimensions must offer facilities 

 for distribution in many unexpected ways. Violent gales 

 of wind, for example, will, we know, carry bodies of 



^ This chapter formed a portion of the author's Presidential Address 

 to the Entoniolgical Society of London in January 1871, and is a reply 

 to the arguments of the late Mr. Andrew Murray in a paper published 

 by the Linnean Society in 1870, and to similar views held by many 

 other writers, and still occasionally put forward. 



