40 ME. A. MURRAY ON THE GKO GRAPHICAL RELATIONS OF 



of Europe, Thalassophilus at Madeira, Thalassohius at Chili ; and 

 the late Mr, Wm. Sharpe Macleay informed me, in a letter written 

 not long before his death, that he had found a similar species on the 

 shores of Australia. Not then having my eyes open to the true 

 significance of the occurrence of those species in these localities, I 

 considered that probably they would be found on all coasts. I do 

 not expect this now. I imagine they will be found confined to the 

 coasts of the lands to which my microtypal stirps extends ; and, in 

 point of fact, they have not as yet been found anywhere else. 



The distribution of the blind-cave Coleoptera is very remark- 

 able. In the caves where they occur in Europe (chiefly in Car- 

 niola, Hungary, Corsica, and the Pyrenees) almost every new 

 cave produces a new species closely allied to, but distinct from, 

 those in the nearest caves ; but more remarkable still, the Mam- 

 moth Cave of Kentucky produces a species of Anophthalmus so 

 close to the Carniolan species that it is only on examination that 

 one sees they are distinct. The Anophthalmi and their allies are 

 carnivorous, hunting beetles, and, as I have just said, their parent 

 type seems to be Trechus ; but the same thing occurs with another 

 totally difierent type, Adelops, a clavicorn allied to Catops. Not 

 only in the different caverns and also under moss and in dark 

 places do dififerent species of this occur, but again in the Mam- 

 moth Cave of Kentucky it reappears side by side with Anophthal- 

 mus in an all but identical form there. 



And here, while upon the cave-insects, I may remind the 

 reader of the blind Eeptilia and Crustacea of which allied forms 

 occur in the European and American caves ; and I would also 

 draw their attention to a lately described form of cave-locustriau 

 which has a distribution still more in accordance with the range 

 of my microtypal stirps. One species occurs in caves in Europe, 

 another in America, and a third in a limestone cave at Colling- 

 wood. Middle Island, New Zealand. They were at first described 

 under diff'erent generic names, it being supposed, probably from 

 the distance of their localities, that they must be distinct ; but Mr. 

 Scudder,the eminent American orthopteristjhas shown that all three 

 belong to one genus, which he has named Sadencecus. Although 

 they inhabit the deepest parts of the caves, they are not blind, 

 but have the long legs which seem characteristic of the Anopli- 

 thalmi and Cave-Araneidse. 



In the Elateridffl the characters are slender and often artificial, 

 and so not well adapted for the elimination of questions of geo- 



