THE CHIEF COLEOPTEROUS FAUN7E. 



69 



appear as a plain like the desert Patagonian junction, but a moun- 

 tainous or hilly country which would be watered by streams, 

 clothed with forests and fitted for the habitation of such sparkling 

 creatures as the Urania ; for we see that nature always assimilates 

 the aspect of the inhabitants of a country more or less to its pre- 

 vailing hue; and where forests and flowers and dewdrops abound, 

 there she clothes them in her most gorgeous robes. 



It may be that the last scene of all of this strange eventful 

 history, prior to the appearance of the land as it now stands, was 

 the extension of the microtypal regions of Cape Horn out to 

 Kerguelenland, whereby the antarctic islands had already re- 

 ceived their present flora, an extension which must have sub- 

 sisted until a comparatively recent period, at least subsequent to 

 the glacial epoch ; otherwise I do not see how these islands could 

 have been redintegrated in the possession of their flora after 

 the retreat of the ice. As regards the bridge or range to 

 Madagascar, that must have been its last scene ; for otherwise we 

 should not have it preserving its position and contour at the 

 bottom of the sea. 



Africa itself is not difficult to read. Subject to the modi- 

 fications of which I have been speaking, the whole of the eastern 

 half of the continent is one broad band composed of one fauna. 



Lay a parallel ruler on the map, with one limb along the 

 east coast and the other limb drawn back as far west as Congo 

 on the west coast, and you have the region I refer to pretty 

 fairly marked out. It includes Abyssinia, Somali-land, Mozam- 

 bique, Natal, the Cape, Namaqua-land, and Angola. A suc- 

 cession of great lakes and deserts is known to mark out part of the 

 western margin of this region; to the west of it, or rather of 

 the barrier so composed, we have what I may call an island sur- 

 rounded by a nearly dry ditch, viz. the unknown region between 

 Gaboon and the Congo on the south, a moat only partially sup- 

 plied with water, the Albert-Nyanza line of lakes on the east, 

 the Sahara on the north, and the Atlantic on the west. The 

 countries of which this island is composed are, Senegal, Guinea, Old 

 Calabar, and Gaboon. While it has a large share of the general 

 African element of the eastern side of the continent, it has also 

 specialities of its own, and superinduced upon it the very per- 

 ceptible flavour of Brazil of which I have already spoken. 



In fixing the southern limits of this South-American element 

 in West Africa, I have been guided partly by the descriptions 



