THE CHIEF COLEOPTEROUS FAUNAE. 



53 



Examined, what is it but a modified Cossyphus ? At the first glance, 

 one would seek to place Chrysolopus spectabilis among the Diamond 

 Beetles ; at the second, among the Aterpidce ; but Lacordaire 

 rightly tells us that botli in character and habits it is only a 

 magnified and abnormally decorated Hylobius. Another very 

 characteristic Australian form is the genus Paropsis. But 

 although almost confined to Australia, there are two exceptions, 

 Paropsis 12-pustulata, GrebL, and P. hieroglyphica, Fab., both from 

 Dauria, one of our microtypical countries, and one which, on any 

 other other principle but that of my hypothesis, it seems dif- 

 ficult to connect with Australia. Stigmodera puzzles me as to 

 its first origin more than any of the other peculiar institutions 

 of Australia. It occurs in almost equal abundance and in still 

 greater beauty in Chili, even showing itself by one or two strag- 

 glers in Brazil ; and both its form and coloration are so close to 

 those of our European and American Ancylocheira, which were 

 already common in the Miocene epoch, that it is difficult to 

 doubt that the one is a modification of the other ; but then we have 

 Ancylocheira proper also in Australia, the elongated form of 

 Ancylocheira, which is found in California; and although that 

 helps the microtypal list in one way, it rather militates against 

 Stigmodera being descended directly from Ancylocheira. There 

 is, indeed, nothing to hinder the species from having retained its 

 type in part of the land and changed it another. On the 

 other hand, however, Stigmodera can hardly be separated from 

 Temognatha, certainly not in a derivative point of view ; and Te- 

 mognatha cannot be separated from Julidimorpha, and it is so like 

 the African Julodis or Sternocera that it is difficult to believe 

 that it does not contain some African black blood, communicated 

 at the time when there was some connexion between the Cape 

 of Grood Hope and the south-west corner of Australia — a con- 

 nexion which is recognized by all botanists, and whose traces are 

 also discernible in all the other classes of organic beings, and 

 which, as already said, may have been one of the means by 

 which the Cape obtained the sprinkling of microtypal forms 

 which is to be met with there. The Longicorn genus Hesthesis 

 is now confined to Australia ; but it is one of the European 

 Miocene genera recorded by Heer. The genus Chrysomela 

 is distinctly microtypal in its distribution, being, with a few 

 easily understood exceptions, absent from India, Africa, and 

 Brazil. One very distinct form of Chrysomela is the elongated 



