10 ME. A. MUEEAT ON THE GEOGEAPHICAL EELATIONS OF 



find in Australia the type of both the plants and beetles very 

 much as he left them. In Europe he would find only the beetles. 

 Indeed I am strongly disposed to claim even a greater antiquity 

 for our present Coleopterous fauna. Some may remember that 

 when insect remains were first found in the coal-formations, 

 the surprise was general among naturalists at finding them so 

 small in size and so little different from those of the present 

 day. They expected that they should have been as much beyond 

 the existing type in size and splendour as the Megalictliys ex- 

 ceeds a Herring. JSTature, according to tho notions of those 

 days, was in her youth in the Carboniferous epoch, and they ex- 

 pected something of the extravagance of youth in her proceedings. 

 It now seems more probable that the Coleopterous fauna there 

 was the same in type then as now, and that it has continued so in 

 the region I speak of for all the intervening period, in accord- 

 ance with the rule already referred to, that the lower wo descend 

 in the scale of organization, the more persistent is the general 

 character of the forms of which life is composed. 



It is not a I'eply to say that the Eocene flora, which has 

 changed in Europe, being lower in the scale of life than the 

 fauna, should have been equally persistent. It is not lower in 

 the scale of life than insects. They are not in the same scale at all. 

 They are on two distinct and separate ladders ; and the Eocene 

 plants, which have changed, were high up on their ladder (the 

 very mammals of vegetable life), while the Eocene Coleopterous 

 fauna was low down on its. It is to be borne in mind, too, that 

 we have every reason to believe that the changes in condition of 

 life since the Eocene epoch have been much greater and more 

 frequent in Europe than in Australia ; and if the plants are ac- 

 cepted as being more likely to change than the insects under 

 altered conditions in life, it is in Europe rather than in Australia 

 that a change in them was to be expected. 



Of course, in what I have been saying, and shall further say 

 on this subject, I speak of the Coleopterous fauna of Australia 

 as a whole. In one sense it cannot be disputed that it is dif- 

 ferent from that of Europe. The species are not the same, and 

 there are a multitude of peculiar forms ; but the type, especially 

 of what I regard as the more important test-groups, such as tho 

 hunting unintroduceable species, is the same. The peculiar 

 forms can almost always be traced back to enlargement or deve- 

 lopment of some microtypal form. Putting aside such exceptions, 



