Miscellaneous. 179 
three newly-discovered British Coleoptera.” Other papers, chiefly 
on the Coleoptera of various districts of the British Isles, were con- 
tributed by him to the ‘ Zoologist’ in 1846 and 1847; but in the 
autumn of the latter year his friends were shocked with the news 
that he had suffered from a severe attack of blood-spitting, which, 
although no serious results were immediately to be apprehended 
from it, would necessitate his passing at least the ensuing winter 
in a milder climate than that of England. Madeira was the 
locality selected by him; and to his compulsory visit to that beauti- 
ful island we_are indebted for some of the finest entomological 
works of which this country can boast. 
From the moment of his landing in Madeira Mr. Wollaston set 
himself, with the energy and enthusiasm which had always charac- 
terized his proceedings, to form a collection of the insects of the 
island; and although his own predilections led him no doubt to pay 
special attention to the Coleoptera, he obtained most interesting 
series of insects belonging to the other orders. So interested was he 
by the results of these researches, that, although no longer compelled 
to submit to exile on account of his health, he returned again and 
again to Madeira, and on these occasions provided himself with a 
small tent, in which he lived high up among the mountains for 
weeks together, accompanied only by Portuguese attendants, whose 
duty it was to bring up the necessary supplies for the little party. 
By these means Wollaston obtained so large a series of insects, and 
especially of Coleoptera, that he found himself in a position to give 
a very exhaustive account of the beetles of the main island of 
Madeira and of those scattered points of rock, the Salvages and 
Desertas, which form small groups in its immediate vicinity. After 
several years of work his results appeared in 1854 under the title of 
‘Insecta Maderensia,’ in a handsome quarto volume, illustrated with 
coloured plates of beautiful figures, drawn by Mr. Westwood and 
engraved by Mr. Frederick Smith. The qualities displayed in this 
great work, the accuracy of research, and the painstaking and 
thoroughly philosophical manner in which the subject was treated, 
at once placed Wollaston in the first rank of systematic entomologists; 
while the curious results of his investigations, revealing as they did, 
in the little spot of ground on which they had been carried on, a 
most singular mixture of European and Mediterranean types, with 
peculiar species, constituting genera and even more extensive groups 
of which no examples were known elsewhere, gave the work a 
special interest, and led its accomplished author to speculate on the 
possibility of the former existence of an Atlantic land, from the 
inhabitants of which these peculiar types were descended. 
By a very natural process such speculations led to the desire to 
investigate the insect-faunas of the other Atlantic islands; and the 
entomological portion of the great work of Webb and Berthelot on 
the Canaries no doubt furnished some indications that interesting 
discoveries might be looked for there. Accordingly, after making 
another visit to Madeira in 1855, and preparing a Catalogue of the 
