56 MB. A. MURRAY ON TUE GEOGRAPHICAL RELATIONS OF 



make the admission too unqualilied ; I must not lose sight of the 

 beeches, the Prenelas, the Phyllocladi, which are of a different 

 stirps from that of the rest of the flora of New Holland, a micro- 

 typal class of plants, too, that obviously connect New Holland 

 with the microtypal lands of Chili and New Zealand. 



The mammals and the birds of New Holland must, like the 

 flora, be kept apart, and put in another category from the in- 

 sects. How far this separation has to be carried in other classes, 

 I shall not examine at present. 



The Coleopterous fauna of New Zealand, although it has a 

 somewhat different facies from that of New Holland, cannot be 

 really separated from it. There are too many points of concur- 

 rence which can be accounted for only by a common origin to 

 allow us to do so. The facies, although not quite the same, is in 

 the same line, sombre, sad-coloured, small, or moderate-sized 

 species. One very marked and distinct family of Carabidse (the 

 Cnemacanthidse of Lacordaire, Broscidse of Putzeys) seems conclu- 

 sive as to the former connexion of Australia, New Zealand, Chili, 

 and Patagonia — that of Chili and Patagonia more distant, and 

 that of New Holland and New Zealand more intimate, and both 

 characterized by a distinct section, which Castelnau has erected 

 into a genus, named Mecodema. Putzeys, who has lately pub- 

 blished a monograph of the whole family, looking only at the 

 countries in which it is located, says truly enough, " the Broscida) 

 are represented in most regions of the globe;" but it is only 

 another instance of microtypal being mistaken for cosmopolitan. 

 Taking the continents of our modern maps as real regions, the 

 family is represented most widely; but disentangling the loca- 

 lities and referring them to stirps, not a single species will be 

 met with in the Indo-Malayan, the African, or Brazilian fauna, 

 but the localities will be found to lie all in microtypal re- 

 gions, and to be pretty generally and equally distributed over 

 them all. 



It may be instructive if I run over the genera of which the 

 family is composed. Taking Putzeys's Monograph we have — 



• Broscus. Europaeo-Asiatic. 

 Graspedonotus. Japan, 

 Mecodema. New Zealand. 

 Metaglymma. New Zealand. 

 I'ercosoma. Tasmania and Victoria. 



