120 



sequel. We may premise however^ that, so far as the 

 aborigines of this province are concerned, their course 

 will be found, upon the whole, to have been a northerly 

 one. 



As regards the slowness, and the direction, of the 

 quondam migration (questions which can scarcely be 

 treated apart from each other), some light may be 

 thrown on the subject from considerations like the fol- 

 lowing. The Canaries are the head-quarters of the 

 genus Hegeter ; TeneriflFe may indeed be called the land 

 of Hegeters. No less than thirteen or fourteen species 

 have been recorded as indigenous to those islands ; and 

 there can be no reasonable doubt whatsoever that that 

 ancient region (when continuous and entire) was the 

 primaeval centre, or range, of that Heteromerous group. 

 The Hegeters are an apterous race, and of a sedentary 

 temperament ; hence, when the area (whether by general 

 or partial subsidence, it signifies not) was broken up, it 

 is not surprising that those local fragments of it should 

 have become the nucleus of reception, as it were, for the 

 members of that genus. Nevertheless, a few of these 

 many representatives (of more discursive capabilities per- 

 haps than the rest) had found their way, before the 

 period of dissolution, to a considerable distance from 

 their original haunts. Thus, one of them (the H. late- 

 bricola, Woll.) had arrived at what now constitutes the 

 rocks of the Salvages ; another (the H. elongatus, Oliv.), 

 at least, if not two, had colonized the Madeiras, and is 

 said (though I believe incorrectly) to have even reached 



