INSECT FAUNA RAINBOW. 101 



devastator when identified by me has always been C. margini- 

 pennis, Latr. This latter species I have observed on several 

 of the islands." 



The headquarters of Calotermes, as indeed the Termitidse as a 

 whole, is Tropical America, more species having been recorded 

 from Brazil than any other part of the globe, and from whence 

 many have distributed. Arguing from the same premises, Tropical 

 America would appear to be the home of the Cocos tribe, the 

 majority of its species being found within that zone. In discussing 

 this question, Mr. W. Botting Hemsley says*: "De Candolle 

 statesf he formerly believed it to have spread from Western 

 America, but with fuller data and more experience in such ques- 

 tions, he inclines to the opinion that its original home is the 

 Indian Archipelago ; but as the thirty other species belonging to 

 the genus are restricted to Tropical America, the first opinion 

 seems the sounder." It is quite probable that Cocos nucifera, 

 being an introduced plant into the Islands of the Pacific, the 

 insect that proves so destructive to it, may also have been 

 introduced, if not actually with, at any rate at no late date after 

 its introduction. The distribution and association of this species 

 of Termitid, with its host plant, therefore affords an interesting 

 study when considered in the light of faunistic distribution, coming 

 as it did, originally from Mexico and California. From the early 

 days of settlement in California, the Hawaiian Islands have been 

 a centre of commercial enterprise with the Californians, and it is 

 possible therefore that Calotermes marginipennis may have been 

 introduced in Hawaii by human agency, and that when swarming 

 numbers of these destructive insects may have been wafted from 

 island to island. The coconut palm was first introduced into 

 the Ellice Group during the reign of King Touassa, somewhere 

 about two centuries ago. During the period intervening, and up 

 to more recent times, the islands were frequently visited and 

 raided by neighbouring islanders (see pp. 44 and 45 of Part I. of 

 this Memoir) ; besides this the Ellice Group was the field of a 

 great whaling fishery in the early forties, and this industry was 

 pursued chiefly by Americans, who not only visited the group, 

 but also other islands of the Pacific from Hawaii onwards, so 

 that, taking all these facts into consideration, it is quite reasonable 

 to suppose that this, and other species of insects, may have been 

 introduced by the agency of man. It is unfortunate, considering 

 its many important bearings, that the fauna of the Pacific Islands 

 has not been more thoroughly worked ; when it is, however, the 

 distribution of sppcies both fauna and flora will doubtless form 

 one of the most interesting and instructive lessons of modern 

 biological investigation. 



* Challenger Reports Botany, i., 2, 1885, p. 203. 

 t De Candolle Origin des Plantes Cultivees, p. 350. 



