496 GEOGRAPHICAL ZOOLOGY. [part iv. 



the district in question only forms a part of the Palaearctic 

 region, which would thus seem to possess its full proportion of 

 the species of this family. Confining ourselves to the generic 

 forms, we find far less difference than usual between the 

 numbers possessed by the tropical and the temperate regions ; 

 the richest being the Australian, with 47 genera, 20 of which 

 are peculiar ; and the poorest the Nearctic, with 24 genera, of 

 which 7 are peculiar. The Oriental has 41 genera, 14 of which 

 are peculiar; the Neotropical 39, of which the large proportion 

 of 18 are peculiar; the Ethiopian 27, of which 6 are peculiar; 

 and the Paloearctic also 27, but with 9 peculiar. 



A most interesting feature in the distribution of this family, 

 is the strong affinity shown to exist between the Australian 

 and Neotropical regions, which have 4 genera common to both 

 and found nowhere else ; but besides this, the extensive and 

 highly characteristic Australian genus, Stigmodera, is closely 

 related to a number of peculiar South American genera, such as 

 Conognatha, Hyperantha, Dactylozodcs, — the last altogether con- 

 fined to Chili and Temperate South America. Here we have 

 a striking contrast to the Cetoniidae, and we can hardly help 

 concluding, that, as the latter is typically a tropical group, so 

 the present family, although now so largely tropical, had an 

 early and perhaps original development in the temperate regions 

 of Australia, spreading thence to Temperate South America as 

 well as to the tropical regions of Asia and Africa. The 

 Australian and Oriental regions have 4 genera exclusively in 

 common, but they also each possess a number of peculiar or 

 characteristic genera, such as the Indo-Malayan Catoxantha 

 (which has only a single species in the Moluccas) and nine others 

 of less importance ; and the exclusively Austro-Malayan genus, 

 Sanibus, with five smaller groups, and Cyphogastra, with only 2 

 Indo-Malay species. The Oriental and Ethiopian regions are very 

 distinct, only possessing the single genus, Sternocera, exclusively 

 in common. The Nearctic and Pakearctic are also distinct, only 

 one genus, Dicerca, being confined to America (North and South) 

 and Europe, a fact which again points to a southern origin for 

 this family, and its comparatively recent extension into the 



