448 dr. f. b. white on the [May 7f 



abundant now in the island ; in each case where I met with only one 

 specimen, it turned out to be a new species. It is therefore not at 

 all improbable that, like the native plants and the Snails, which we 

 know are fast disappearing, some having gone entirely, the Spiders, 

 tor some cause or other, are also yielding up their native land to 

 foreign invaders." 



Mr. Wollaston, whose painstaking investigations of the faunas of 

 the North Atlantic islands, and careful study of the Coleoptera of St. 

 Helena especially qualified him to give an opinion on this subject, 

 thus writes regarding the Beetles 1 : — " The whole of the 129 species 

 to which I have just alluded are, with a single exception (the Chilo- 

 menes lunata, Fab.), absolutely peculiar to St. Helena ; so that the 

 question of geographical distribution would seem to be well-nigh 

 • nipped in the bud.' Moreover, from all that I know of the South- 

 African Coleoptera it has almost nothing in common with 



these 129 aboriginal St.-Helenians, which stand out singly, as it 

 were, and alone, related more or less inter se, but unrelated for the 

 most part, to any recognized continental forms. It is true that two 

 of the most significant of the Ehynchophorous types — namely, 

 Nesiotes (of the Tanyrhynchidce) and Acarodes (of the Anthribiid<e) 

 — are allied conspicuously to Echinosoma and Xenorchestes of the 

 Madeiran archipelago ; but if any more successful generalizer than 

 myself can develop much from these points of quasi-contact, he is 

 quite welcome to the result. So far as I can understand the evidence 

 before me, any unprejudiced inquiry into the ' origin ' (as usually 

 understood by that term) of these St.-Helenian Coleoptera, does not 

 elicit, in reply, so much as even an echo ; for not only are they en- 

 demic (in the strictest sense of the word), but an overwhelming 

 majority of them are attached (or were so originally) to trees and 

 shrubs which would seem to exist nowhere in the world except on 

 this remote rock, 1 200 miles from the nearest point of the African 

 coast, surrounded by an all but unfathomable ocean, and which has 

 every appearance of having been piled up by successive erruptions into 

 a basaltic mass at no period very considerably larger than that which 

 we now see. 'Whence then, came its fauna and flora,' are enigmas 

 which I cannot presume to answer on any known principles of deriva- 

 tion and descent. To a mind which, like my own, can accept the 

 doctrine of creative acts as not necessarily ' unphilosophical,' the 

 mysteries, however great, become at least" conceivable ; but those 

 which are not able to do this may perhaps succeed in elaborating 

 some special theory of their own, which, even if it does not satisfy 

 all the requirements of the problem, may at least prove convincing 

 to themselves. The St.-Helena fauna cannot, I think, be said to 

 have had much light yet thrown upon it as regards its actual ' origin' 

 (except, perhaps, in so far as my individual opinions on the subject 

 may be accepted by others who are predisposed to receive them) ; 

 but its primitive (or at all events remote) stateis another matter, and 

 appears to be capable of some real elucidation from the facts to 

 which we have access." 



1 Coleoptera Sancte-Hrtens^ p. xk. 



