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SOME SPECULATIONS on the DEKIVATION of 



our BKITISH COLEOPTEBA. 



By W. E. Sharp. 



[Read January 13th, 1899.] 



Among the many problems to which the attention of the 

 modern Biologist is invited, that of the present distri- 

 bution and probable derivation of floras and faunas is one 

 of the most interesting and fascinating — interesting because 

 in the most cursory survey of the subject so many issues 

 are seen at once to be involved ; fascinating because so 

 wide a door is thrown open to the most unfettered 

 theorizing, and because in any adequate comprehension 

 of these problems possible answers to so many questions 

 seem to lie hidden — questions propounded by the Geologist 

 not less than by the Biologist. 



No one will dispute that this enquiry is a very difficult 

 and perplexing one ; that its factors are more than usually 

 complicated and obscure ; and that the evidence we have 

 available is, as it affects vast groups of animals, meagre 

 and defective. As Dr. Wallace has well said in a recent 

 work : — 



" There is no short and easy method of dealing with 

 these questions (that is, the present distribution of organic 

 life), because they are in their very nature the visible 

 outcome and residual product of the whole past history of 

 the earth. If we take the organic productions of a small 

 island or of any very limited tract of country, such as a 

 moderate sized parish, we have in their relations and 

 affinities — in the fact that they are there and others are 

 not there — a problem which involves all the migrations of 



