64 ME. A. MUKBA.Y ON THE GEOGllAPUTCAL RETiATTONS OY 



printing of it, which shows me that I must not take this for granted ; 

 and the delay in printing this paper fortunately gives me the op- 

 portunity of supplying the want. Mr. Bentham, in his Annual 

 Address, 24 May 1869, p. xciv, says : — 



" Mr. Andrew Murray, in a paper on the Geographical Distri- 

 bution of the Coleoptera of Old Calabar, in the twenty-third vo- 

 lume of our Transactions, as well as in his Monograph of Nitidu- 

 larieae, in the twenty-fourth volume, calls attention to a remark- 

 able representation of Tropical- American types in Tropical Africa. 

 I have myself on several occasions indicated a similar curious con- 

 nexion in various vegetable types ; and if we were to rely on these 

 grounds alone, we might, with Mr. Murray, speculate on a former 

 continuity between the two continents across the Atlantic. But, 

 independently of geological arguments, such conclusions are much 

 invalidated by facts since brought to notice, as, for instance, that 

 some of these common types are also represented in Australia or 

 other distant lands south of the Equator. The general features 

 also of the vegetation of the two eontiueuts tend to the conclu- 

 sion, more or less confirmed, I believe, in various zoological de- 

 partments, that, from a very early period in the history of organic 

 life^ the broad Atlantic, from the southern tropic to far into the 

 north temperate region, has been an impassable gulf for terres- 

 trial organisms, except by such occasional waifs and strays as may 

 result from actual means of dispersion." 



Although neither by nature nor training at all disposed jurare 

 in verba magistri, I candidly acknowledge that such an expres- 

 sion of opinion coming from one to whose judgment I, in com- 

 mon with all other naturalists, pay so much deference, satisfies 

 me, not that I am wrong, but that my proofs are insufficient. I 

 bow to his decision, lay fresh proofs before him and the reader, 

 and ask a fresh judgment. In the Appendix I give a list of the 

 genera of Coleoptera of Old Calabar with Brazilian affinities, so 

 far as I have yet published them. I am not yet half through ; but 

 what is published may be taken as a type of what is to follow. I 

 might have swelled my list by including species of universally dis- 

 tributed genera which were allied to Brazilian species of the 

 same genera ; but I have omitted them and taken only genera 

 peculiar to the Brazilian stirps. The genera in this list amount 

 to 21 out of 138, or about a sixth of the whole. Next, to make 

 sure that I do not expose myself to the objection that " some of 

 these common types are also represented in Australia or other 



