“I 
ON THE BOTANY AND ENTOMOLOGY OF ICELAND. 22 
Iceland, of course in the most pioneer and rudimentary 
fashion, what the voyage of the ‘“ Challenger” has in our 
day achieved for the shores of the lands adjoiming the South 
Seas. Ouly a very small portion of one of the two quarto 
volumes is devoted to the consideration of entomology, and 
Hovgaard and | at first turned over the book in vain with- 
out being able to discover that there was any mention of 
insects therein at all. Fortunately for me, the descriptions of 
such species as were recorded were in Latin, and moreover 
perspicuous and helpful for determining the particular kind 
intended, and the information afforded was, to the best of my 
judgment, correct, although the number of species given is 
very scanty, to wit, only 6 Coleoptera, whereas 19 are 
enumerated in the Appendix to Paijkull’s book (which dates 
from 1824, and was compiled by another author, and in 
existence long before Paijkull’s book itself), 81 set down by 
Staudinger in 1857, and 16 kinds, possibly, captured by me 
during July and August of the present year. For the sake 
of clearness, I have subjoined at the end of this record 
Staudinger’s, Paijkull’s, as well as my own list of Coleoptera, 
and that of the old Danish book in full, and have marked 
certain species in the four above-named lists with 2 or 3 or 4 
respectively ascending, as they occurred in 2 or 3 or all of 
the catalogues. It has not been an easy task, as personally 
I am not well up in the Coleoptera, and there has been sub- 
division of genera in the thirty-two years that have elapsed 
since Staudinger’s visit. My own Coleoptera are as yet 
indicated by the genus only, and not in each instance by the 
particular species ; but, wherever I possess the same genus 
as one indicated by Staudinger, I have taken for granted 
that it is one of his species, and not a new one previously 
unnoticed, simply owing to the fact that in my own experi- 
ence it is common and widely distributed. The only merit 
that my short list of Coleoptera of the district is entitled to 
is in consequence of the locality in each case being given, 
and the whole tendency of careful statistics of date, place, 
latitude, and longitude, having been drawn up, has been to 
show the extensive prevalence and wide geographical distri- 
bution of some kinds met with alike on the W. N. and E. 
coasts of a country larger than Ireland, with a coast lne 
deeply indented by far-reaching and very numerous fjords, 
and along shores many hundred miles in extent. In no case, 
has observation, necessarily limited and brief, but at the 
same time very careful, established the fact that each, or 
indeed that any district had its own peculiar Fauna. That 
