THE ANNALS 
AND 
MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
[THIRD SERIES. ] 
No. 53. MAY 1862. 
XXXVIII.—On the Calathi of the Canary Islands. 
By T. Vernon Wo taston, M.A., F.L.S. 
AtrHoucH there are probably few groups of Geodephagous 
Coleoptera less attractive than Calathus, yet, from the important 
part which it plays in the insect-population of the Atlantic Islands, 
I have thought that the following descriptive enumeration of the 
various members of it as yet detected at the Canaries may not be 
altogether without interest, at least to those entomologists who 
are occupied more particularly in the question of geographical 
distribution. When we consider that the last revised catalogue 
acknowledges but 20 unequivocal species of this genus for the 
whole of Europe, it seems scarcely credible that so many as 16 
(and all of them apparently endemic) should have been observed, 
up to the present time, in this small archipelago; and yet, even 
whilst allowing a wide margin for aberration, which we may 
reasonably suppose to have been considerable where the twofold 
influence of altitude and long isolation has been brought to bear 
upon the several forms, I have not been able, after a careful 
study of an extensive series of specimens, collected in the different 
islands and at numerous heights above the sea-level, to reduce 
them satisfactorily to a smaller number. 
The Canarian type of Calathus is rather a singular one, 
being remarkable for its more or less flattened form and elliptic 
outline. In Teneriffe there is an additional peculiarity, which 
is more or less traceable in most of the species, and strongly 
expressed in some of them—in the fact of the alternate inter- 
stices of the elytra being branded with a longitudinal row of 
large punctures ; and although the exact number of these rounded 
impressions is essentially variable, the variations seem neverthe- 
less to take place within limits sufficiently well defined to render 
them an important feature in drawing out the several diagnoses. 
Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser.3. Vol. ix. 
