THE CHIEF COLEOPTEROUS FAUN7E. 



9 



met by the exclamation, " "What ! Australia and Europe the same ! 

 Nonsense : Australia, of all places, is the least like Europe ; when 

 you go there you pass into a wholly new country : everything is 

 reversed there ; the very leaves grow upside down ; it is like 

 visiting some great city of the dead ! " 



I grant it in some things, but not in all. Before I have done, 

 I trust to prove that, in conformity with the principle I started 

 with (that we must not judge of the fauna of one class by the 

 fauna of another), it is not so in Beetles. It must be remem- 

 bered that the present flora of Australia once flourished in 

 Europe. Professor Unger may have occasionally allowed his 

 imagination too free a rein, and the determinations of many of 

 the fossil species by him and Professor Heer on which he based 

 his conclusions in his 'New Holland in Europe' may be in- 

 sufficient or erroneous, but the fact will not be disputed that 

 the Eocene Mora of Europe has many points of correlation with 

 the present flora of Australia. The resemblance no longer exists 

 in the living floras of the two countries ; in Australia alone has 

 the old flora survived. 



As regards insects, on the other hand, we know, from the re- 

 searches of Heer and other naturalists, that the Beetle-fauna of 

 Europe in the Miocene time was of the same type as the present 

 Beetle-fauna of Europe and Asia. There are, unfortunately, no 

 similar materials applicable to the Eocene epoch, nor has any 

 one utilized the lesser materials that exist as Heer has done for 

 the Miocene epoch ; but from the fact that the insects derived 

 from the still older beds of the Stonefield slate belong to the 

 same stirps (I say so on my own authority and from personal 

 examination), and that the whole of the Miocene materials yet 

 made public, although drawn from several places and beds of dif- 

 ferent age, all belong to one fauna, it seems probable that the 

 Entomological Fauna of Europe in the Eocene age was the same 

 as in the Miocene. It is an assumption, but not wholly without 

 warrant ; and starting from it, my hypotheses is that, like the 

 Eocene Elora in Australia, it has survived in its Eocene form 

 down to the present day ; only it has done so more perfectly in 

 England than Australia, while the flora has only done so at^all 

 in the latter. In short, I should hold that if the researches of 

 Sir Charles Lyell should end in carrying back the antiquity of 

 man to the Eocene time, and if the ghost of an Eocene naturalist 

 were to be allowed to revisit the glimpses of the moon, he would 



