THE CHIEF COLEOPTEROUS FAUNjE. 



Africa) ; and the type seems to run on into Chili ; for if Leptops 

 is related to Ilipporhinus, so is Megalometis (a Chilian genus) re- 

 lated, to Leptops. 



A very remarkable African affinity in the Lepidoptera has 

 been mentioned to me by Dr. Welwitsch. It is plain that an 

 affinity to any genus endowed with peculiar properties is ren- 

 dered doubly certain if the supposed allied species possesses the 

 same properties. There is a Lepidopterous insect in Australia, 

 the larva of which possesses remarkable poisonous powers. It 

 has been named Doratophora vulnerans. Such insects also occur 

 in South Africa. Livingstone speaks of a caterpillar called Bigura 

 as producing fearful agony if a sore is touched with its entrails. 

 Mr. Baynes, in his ' Explorations in South-west Africa,' speaks 

 of another, or perhaps the same, which he calls the Xaa, and 

 which is used as a poison for their arrows by the Bushmen ; and 

 Dr. Welwitsch had a personal experience of the severe swell- 

 ing and pain in every part of his body which he touched with his 

 hand after collecting specimens of a caterpillar against which he 

 had been warned as poisonous. He had in consequence of the 

 warning carefully avoided touching them, shoving them into 

 a phial with a straw ; but whether he had inadvertently touched 

 them, or fingered the leaves on which they had been feeding 

 (which he collected for examination), he and his servant were 

 both laid up helpless for two or three days. His specimens of the 

 caterpillar were lost ; but among his Lepidoptera Dr. Eendler, of 

 Vienna, who has undertaken a desciption of them, finds no less 

 than four species of Doratophora ; and these, doubtless, are the 

 perfect insects of species of the caterpillar from one of which he 

 suffered. 



But although African affinities occur among the Lepidoptera, 

 as among other classes, their character, as a body, is microtypal. 

 I am not sufficiently a Lepidopterist to speak with any personal 

 authority on the. subject so. far as regards minute distinctions ; 

 but I am sufficient of an entomologist to say that in the noc- 

 turnal Lepidoptera, especially those from Tasmania and South 

 Australia, the facies is absolutely identical with those of this 

 country, and many of the genera the same. Over the most of 

 Australia diurnal Lepidoptera are extremely scarce ; but the facies 

 in them, too, is of the same character. 



At the outset I admitted the wide difference between the present 

 flora of Australia and our own microtypal flora ; but I must not 



