. 
644 REVIEWS. 
The position of these fishes, seven thousand feet above the level 
of the sea, furnishes another illustration of the extent of eleya- 
tions of regions once connected with the ocean, and the compara- 
tively late period of geologic time at which, in this case, this ele- 
vation took place.” 
If we find so much of interest and novelty in the preliminary 
report, how much has our science in store when the final report 
and its illustrations appear ! 
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION or THE Berries.* —In this ex- 
ceedingly interesting and suggestive essay, the author divides the 
Coleoptera of the world into three great ‘“stirps,” or assembla- 
ges:—the Indo-African, the Brazilian, and what for want of a 
better name he calls the ‘“microtypal” stirps; the species com- 
posing it “being of a smaller size, or, more strictly speaking, not 
containing such large or conspicuous insects as the others.” 
Thus all but the tropical, even including the Australian insects, 
are considered as belonging to this mass of small forms. “The 
coleopterous fauna of our own land [Great Britain] may be taken 
as its type and standard.” 
We very much question «whether this division be not too arti- 
ficial to be generally received by zoologists. The primary distri- 
bution of faunæ corresponding to the polar, temperate and tropical 
regions, would seem to be the more philosophical, being based on 
climatic causes. 
r. Murray believes that the diffusion of animals and plants by 
accidental means “bears no important part in the establishment 
of any definite fauna or flora.” He thinks that actual continuity 
of soil and subsequent isolation alone produce faunz with a defi- - 
nite character. While he thinks these changes of surface took 
place before the Tertiary period, and does not believe that the 
new Atlantis, to take a case in point, existed during that period, 
yet he is one of the most ultra in the school of writers on g 
graphical distribution who take up and put down continents like 
checkermen. Thus the Azores, Canary Islands and St. Helena, 
Ascension Island, St. Paul and Tristan d’Acunha, are to Mr. Mur- 
ray the relics of a former continent, when the Atlantic was dry 
land, and Europe and America ocean beds. He puts down a 
*On the Geographical Relations of the Chief Coleopterous Faunz. By Andrew 
Extracted from the Linnæan Society’s Journal.— Zoology, vol. XI, London, 
