THE ZooLocist—NoveEMBER, 1872. 8305 
see that any useful end would be served thereby, and the revolutionizing of 
our lists would be a real inconvenience, which I think we ought not to be 
called upon to undergo without good cause being shown. If the productions 
of Guernsey and Jersey are to be added to our lists because these islands 
are British possessions, we must also admit the productions of Gibraltar, 
Malta, and Heligoland. It would not be difficult to show that Heligoland 
has a better claim to be considered British than the Channel Islands : ; the 
sea which separates it from England is everywhere shallow, a very slight 
elevation of its bed would lay dry the greater part of the German Ocean, 
aud there can be no doubt that long after the formation of the English 
Channel there was a land communication with the continent across the 
space where the German Ocean now rolls, of which the speck called Heligo- 
land is the last remnant. Although with few, and those mostly doubifal, 
exceptions, all the animals and plants of the British Islands are identical 
with continental species; still the sea is a definite boundary, and species 
which have been subjected for long periods to insular conditions have in 
many cases acquired peculiarities which mark them as strictly British; 
for instance, amongst the Lepidoptera, Agrotis Ashworthii appears to be 
the English form of Agrotis candelisequa; Agrotis lunigera of Agrotis 
Trux; Hadena assimilis of Crymodes Exulis; Acronycta Myrice of 
Acronycta Euphorbize. Now the insects of the Channel Islands do not 
exhibit British peculiarities; they do not vary from the form of the same 
species in Normandy and other parts of France, and have no connection 
with British insects, except as being also members of the European fauna; 
but should Mr. Cambridge’s “simple solution” be adopted, unless I greatly 
underrate the energy and intelligence of our collectors and dealers, so 
_ prolific would the Channel Islands be found (in Lepidoptera at all events) 
that I should not be surprised if the whole European fauna, of some six 
thousand species, found its way through the side-door it is proposed to open. 
Our list would then resemble a comet, the insects of Great Britain and 
Ireland representing the nucleus, those of the Channel Islands its por: 
tentous tail! _ While saying this I am an earnest advocate for English 
entomologists extending their field of study, and endeavouring to put to 
some scientific use the vast collections of British insects, which exist 
apparently to so little purpose, and I believe the first step to be the obtaining 
some acquaintance with the general European fauna and the relation which 
our native species bear to it. The British islands do not by themselves 
form a zoological or botanical province: to treat them as such is an arbi- 
trary arrangement for the convenience of collectors, and to make a collection 
of the insects found in them, and then to stop, although certainly an 
intelligible object—a sort of census of the hexapod population—appears to 
me to be a very incomplete affair, and to my mind it does not seem any more 
possible to study British insects in a satisfactory manner, apart from their 
