180 Miscellaneous. 
Coleoptera of that island, which was published in 1857. by the 
Trustees of the British Museum, who had purchased his valuable 
collections, Wollaston (in 1858 and 1859) went to the Canaries in 
the yacht of his friend Mr. John Gray; and the results of his re- 
searches, embodying descriptions of many new forms of Coleoptera 
and numerous corrections of the statements of previous authors, 
appeared in 1864, also under the auspices of the Trustees of the 
British Museum*. 
In the mean time, however, other observers had been investigating 
the Canarian Coleoptera; and in the very next year after the publi- 
cation of his Museum Catalogue, Wollaston found himself under 
the necessity of bringing out a fresh book, entitled ‘ Coleoptera 
Atlantidum,’ in which he not only gave a complete list of the species, 
with descriptions of many new ones, but discussed at considerable 
length the theoretical ‘conclusions to which he was led by his ex- 
amination of them. For the further confirmation of these conclu- 
sions he again embarked on board Mr. Gray’s yacht in 1866, for a 
cruise among the Cape- Verde Islands ; and the fruits of this journey 
appeared in the following year under the title of ‘ Coleoptera Hes- 
peridum.’ Later still he undertook the investigation of the beetles 
of St. Helena; and his descriptive notice of these, ‘ Coleoptera 
Sanctee-Helenze,’ which appeared only last year, showed a con- 
siderable advance even upon the results recently published by Mr. 
Melliss. 
From his investigations of the Coleoptera of all these little 
islands scattered so widely over the Atlantic, Wollaston was strongly 
confirmed in his belief that they are relics of a great tract of land 
or group of large islands, now submerged, except the summits of its 
highest mountains, which afford a refuge for the descendants of a 
few of its peculiar inhabitants. These points, and many others of 
interest with regard to geographical distribution, are discussed 
with great acumen in the introductions to the works above cited. 
Throughout his career Wollaston maintained the independence of 
species, and indeed was, for a long time, an ardent opponent of the 
doctrine of evolution. His opinions on this subject took a somewhat 
modified form in his later writings, in which he accepted the notion 
that some forms which could hardly be regarded otherwise than as 
species had a recognizable derivative origin. As early as 1856 he 
published a small work on the Variation of Species, which con- 
tains many valuable remarks on this subject and also discusses the 
nature of genera. 
Notwithstanding his special devotion to the study of the Coleo- 
ptera, Wollaston found time to attend to some other things during 
his visits to the Atlantic islands. In his first sojourn in Madeira 
the Rev. R. T. Lowe, then chaplain at Funchal, called his attention 
* It is to be hoped that the beautiful collections, both of shells and 
insects, upon which Mr. Wollaston was at work until the very close of 
his life may be acquired by the national Museum, and placed side by 
side with those earlier collections which are already in its cabinets. 
