XI SCARCITY OF INSECTS 253 



suited some of the orders, such as lizards, might have been 

 foreseen ; but with respect to frogs, this was not so obvious. 



Beetles occur in very small numbers : it was long before I 

 could believe that a country as large as Scotland, covered with 

 vegetable productions and with a variety of stations, could be 

 so unproductive. The few which I found were alpine species 

 (Harpalidse and Heteromidae) living under stones. The vege- 

 table-feeding Chrysomelidae, so eminently characteristic of the 

 Tropics, are here almost entirely absent ;^ I saw very few flies, 

 butterflies, or bees, and no crickets or Orthoptera. In the pools 

 of water I found but few aquatic beetles, and not any fresh- 

 water shells : Succinea at first appears an exception ; but here 

 it must be called a terrestrial shell, for it lives on the damp 

 herbage far from water. Land-shells could be procured only 

 in the same alpine situations with the beetles. I have already 

 contrasted the climate as well as the general appearance of 

 Tierra del Fuego with that of Patagonia ; and the difference is 

 strongly exemplified in the entomology. I do not believe they 

 have one species in common ; certainly the general character of 

 the insects is widely different. 



If we turn from the land to the sea, we shall find the latter 

 as abundantly stocked with living creatures as the former is 

 poorly so. In all parts of the world a rocky and partially 

 protected shore perhaps supports, in a given space, a greater 

 number of individual animals than any other station. There 

 is one marine production, which from its importance is worthy 

 of a particular history. It is the kelp, or Macrocystis pyrifera. 

 This plant grows on every rock from low-water mark to a great 

 depth, both on the outer coast and within the channels.^ I 



1 I believe I must except one alpine Haltica, and a single specimen of a Melasoma. 

 Mr. Waterhouse informs me, that of the Harpalidse there are eight or nine species — 

 the forms of the greater number being very peculiar ; of Heteromera, four or five 

 species ; of Rhyncophora six or seven ; and of the following families one species in 

 each : Staphylinidse, Elateridoe, Cebrionidse, Melolonthidae. The species in the 

 other orders are even fewer. In all the orders, the scarcity of the individuals is 

 even more remarkable than that of the species. Most of the Coleoptera have been 

 carefully described by Mr. Waterhouse in the Annals of Nat. Hist. 



2 Its geographical range is remarkably wide ; it is found from the extreme 

 southern islets near Cape Horn, as far north on the eastern coast (according to 

 information given me by Mr. Stokes) as lat. 43°, — but on the western coast, as Dr. 

 Hooker tells me, it extends to the R. San Francisco in California, and perhaps even 

 to Kamtschatka. We thus have an immense range in latitude ; and as Cook, who 

 must have been well acquainted with the species, found it at Kerguelen Land, no 

 less than 140° in longitude. 



