IV. 
ENTOMOLOGY. 
By J. O. Westwood, M.A., F.L.S., Etc. 
Hope Professor of Zoology in the University of Oxford. 
(Plates E— H.) 
The Collection of Insects formed by Mr. F. Oates, now in 
the Entomological Museum of the University of Oxford, 
although not of considerable extent, fortunately comprises 
examples of many of the very peculiar groups and genera 
characteristic of the greater part of the African continent. 
The geographical distribution of animals has, during 
the last few years, attracted so much attention among 
naturalists, that a few preliminary observations on the 
subject will not be considered out of place. 
M. Lacordaire, in the chapter on the geographical dis- 
tribution of insects, in his " Introduction a V Entovwlogiel' 
divided the African continent into numerous regions, as 
follows : — I. Upper Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia ; 2. The 
country south of the Atlas Range, as far as the Great 
Desert, and including Morocco ; 3. Senegambia ; 4. The 
coast of Guinea ; 5. Congo ; 6. The Cape of Good Hope ; 
7. Madagascar ; 8. The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon. 
In the still more recent works of Mr. Wallace on the 
geographical distribution of animals, we find that (with 
the exception of the whole of North Africa — including 
the northern half of Egypt and of Arabia — which are 
united with the Mediterranean sub-region and regarded as a 
portion of the primary Polar Arctic region) the remainder 
of Africa, south of the tropic of Cancer, is constituted into a 
primary region, to which the name of "Ethiopian" has been 
applied, and in which the zoological productions are of a 
