268 H. W. BATES 



from them regarding the Geographical Distribution of living 

 forms. It is partly owing to this attention to neglected genera 

 that his collection has yielded the large proportionate number 

 of 207 new species and 15 new genera. 



It is perhaps too early to draw conclusions on the interesting 

 subject of the relations of the Burmese Carabideous Fauna to those 

 of other regions ; for the number of species obtained by Signor 

 Fea, large as it is, cannot be even an approximation to the total 

 number inhabiting the country. This is shown by the fact that 

 of the species enumerated by Schmidt-Goebel in his fragmentary 

 « Faunula Birmanica » which contains a mere fraction of the 

 genera of Carabidae, no fewer than 43 were not met with by 

 Signor Fea. In fact, in tropical countries, even more than in 

 temperate regions, the Carabidae are extremely local, recondite 

 in their haunts and habits and dependent, moreover, on favourable 

 seasons for their appearence, so that many years of assiduous 

 labour by many observers^ in many different localities, are re- 

 quisite before an adequate idea can be obtained of the Fauna 

 of a country in this department. One or two obvious conclu- 

 sions are, however, suggested by even a cursory glance at the 

 present list. One is the close relationship between the Carabideous 

 Fauna of the Irawadi Valley and that of Assam or the Valley 

 of the Brahmaputra showing that the mountainous region con- 

 stituting the watershed of the Irawadi is not high enough to 

 serve as a barrier to the migration of either terrestrial or 

 arboreal species of the group, a conclusion confirmed by the 

 numerous cases in w^hich the same species inhabit the Naga and 

 Khasia hills. A close faunistic relation exist also with the lower 

 Gangetic Valley on the west and the great river basins of the 

 Indo-Chinese countries to the east, as also with the lower valley 

 of the Yangtsze Kiang, Eastern China and Japan. Another con- 

 clusion is the lack of any striking speciality of the Burmese 

 Fauna in this family of Coleoptera. Most of the new genera 

 belong to the obscurer groups of the family, the tropical Asian 

 members of which have hitherto been much neglected and some 

 of them will doubtless be found to occur in the neighbouring 



