THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 

 No. 23. NOVEMBER 1869. 



XXXVI. — On the Coleoptera of St. Helena. 

 By T. Vernon Wollaston, M.A., F.L.S. 



It is now eight years since I gave an enumeration, in the 

 ' Journal of Entomology,' of fourteen species of Coleoptera 

 which had been detected at St, Helena, on the 21st of July 

 1860, by the late Mr. Bewicke, during a few hours' collecting 

 in that island [en passant from the Cape of Good Hope to 

 Madeira). Since then, our knowledge of the fauna has been 

 considerably increased, mainly through the exertions of J. C. 

 Melliss, Esq., a gentleman who is resident on the spot, and 

 who continues to take a lively interest in the various branches 

 of natural science ; and although, clearly, very much remains 

 yet to be done, two successive consignments which he has 

 entrusted to me of the beetles which from time to time have 

 rewarded his researches enable me now to venture on some- 

 thing like a systematic, though short, catalogue (destined, I 

 hope, hereafter, to be greatly increased) of the St.-Helena 

 Coleoptera. 



That a special interest should attach to the productions of 

 any island which is unusually remote, I need scarcely state ; 

 and when we recollect that St. Helena is about 1200 miles 

 from the nearest point of the African continent, we shall at 

 once acknowledge that, for the geographical naturalist, a more 

 isolated field could hardly perhaps be found. The manifest 

 deterioration of the island, in a scientific point of view, during 

 the last 300 years, is a subject on which I need not dilate ; 

 for the primeval forests which are said to have more or less 

 clothed it at its discovery have succumbed beneath the ruth- 

 less hand of " civilization," — a few detached patches alone re- 

 maining, on the extreme summit and more inaccessible slopes, 

 to harbour what is left of that noble fauna the fragments of 

 which are so eccentric that one cannot but suspect the quondam 



Ann.&Mag.N.Hisi. Ser. 4. Vol'w. 22 



