LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. Ixxiii 



and which he regards as representing the earliest type of insect life. 

 JFrom it he assumes that the other two orders of masticant insects 

 have proceeded very early, whilst the suctorial forms originated at a 

 later period. But Eugereon combines the wing-characters of the 

 Toroptera, with such a modification of the mouth-organs as to indi- 

 cate pretty clcfU'ly an approach to the suctorial Ilcmiptera ; and 

 both Haeckel and Dohrn seem inclined to regard it as representing 

 one of the stages in the branching-off of the latter from the main 

 genealogical stem. In all such speculations, however, we must re- 

 collect how very scanty are the data upon which we can found 

 them. The isolated forms the remains of which have been pre- 

 served to us in the formations of early geological periods probably 

 represent but an infinitesimally small proportion of the varied 

 organisms then existing, and, as observed by Haeckel in regard to 

 the more numerous remains of shells, give us not only a totally in- 

 adequate, but, in many cases, an absolutely erroneous idea of the 

 relative preponderance of the dilforont classes of beings living at any 

 one time. 



Dr. SufFrian has completed his monograph of South- American 

 Chrysomelidse in the Linnsea Entomologica of Stettin. A new 

 pej'iodical, the Coleopterologische Hefte of E. v. Harold, does not 

 confine itself to European forms, but promises to supply valuable 

 general memoirs on Coleoptera ; and the editor announces tbe ap- 

 proaching publication in its pages of a general catalogue of the species 

 of this order. 



Gabriel Koch has published, at Leipzig, an essay on the geogra- 

 phical distribution of Lepidoptera, under the title of " Die indo- 

 australische Lepidopterenfauna in ihrem Zusammenhang mit der euro- 

 paischcn," in which he advances some new views in zoological geo- 

 graphy as regards the Lepidoptera, from the consideration of which 

 he proposes to divide the surface of the earth into three great regions. 

 Of these, the European includes the whole of Northern Asia, and 

 America north of 60° N. lat. ; the Ameiican is formed by the re- 

 mainder of the western continent ; and the Indian, or South- Asiatic, 

 extends through Malasia and Polynesia to Australia. This division 

 is illustrated by the author with considerable detail. His chief dif- 

 ficulty appears to be with the African continent, which, although 

 allied to that of Europe (with which he joins it), especially in the 

 natural productions of its northern part, certainly exhibits strong 

 Indian proclivities in its Lepidoptera, as well as in some other groups 

 of animals. These regions may, in some measure, be confirmed by 



