ntiO ihb Zoologist— July, 1868. 



Fogo 93 species. 



Brava . . . .• . 61 „ 

 S. Nicolai ... 27 



A glance at the map will show that these numbers have no cor- 

 respondence with the superficial area examined, since S. Nicolai, 

 which has the fewest recorded species, has a larger superficies than 

 S. Vicente, which has the largest number. I think it is scarcely 

 necessary for me to add that the larger aggregate number in the 

 second table arises from the fact that several species are common to 

 two, three or more of the islands. The coleopterous genera which 

 may be said to characterize this archipelago are Oxycara of the family 

 Tentyriadae, and Trichosternum of the family Opatridae, both of them 

 of course heteromerous, and both possessing slightly modified, although 

 permanent, exponents in most of the islands — "exponents," says 

 Mr. Wollaston, " which it is far from impossible may be in reality 

 but insular phases of two aboriginal generic types." Then, as regards 

 the entire absence from the Cape Verdes, of certain coleopterous 

 families common to all continents, whatever their temperature, we 

 have here an illustration of Man's power or influence iu altering the 

 original character of the fauna of any given tract. It would appear 

 that all these islands, as well as the Canaries and Madeiras, were 

 formerly inhabited by a race or species of man perfectly distinct from 

 the European emigrants who now occupy the soil : whether the term 

 Huanches properly applied to the whole or only to a portion of these 

 aborigines, I will not pretend to say in the face of such authorities as 

 Prichard and Latham ; but whether the men who then " ran wild in 

 woods," were of one or many races, it is quite certain they have 

 expired, and with them those woods in which they ran. By the ener- 

 getic white man the Huanche was converted, christianized, civilized, 

 demoralized, diseased and destroyed : the first three terras are applied 

 by the optimists ; the last three are stern, truthful and incontrovertible 

 — they are totally apart from sentiment or speculation. Now the 

 invaders not only destroyed the natives, but the forests they inhabited, 

 and with the forests perished the longicorns, the glory of all forest- 

 clad countries. The euphoibian flora — strange, uncouth and dis- 

 tinct — still exists to some extent, and with it a euphoibian fauna ; 

 but both are rapidly disappearing, and it is by no means improbable 

 that the naturalist visiting the Cape Verdes a century hence will prove 

 to his own entire satisfaction that neither ever existed except in the 



