8 MR. A. MURRAY ON THE GEOGRAPHICAL RELATIONS OE 



is not altogether a satisfactory name, because the stirps does con- 

 tain some large species, and it is not peculiar to it to abound in 

 small ones. But, taken as a whole, its ingredients are smaller and 

 more modest in appearance than those of the others. The fauna 

 and flora of our own land may be taken as its type and standard. 



A like tripartite basis may be traced in every class of beings. 

 It may happen, indeed, that one or other of them, as the Bra- 

 zilian stirps in mammals (Edentata &c, for example), may have 

 almost died out ; in others some former stirps, extinct in all the 

 rest, may have survived in some isolated part of the world (as 

 plants in Australia) ; but, subject to such exceptional modifica- 

 tions, the leading features of my proposition will be found gene- 

 rally applicable to all. It does not come within the scope of my 

 present paper to show more than its application to Coleoptera ; 

 but I do not mean to deprive myself of the aid to be derived 

 from the occurrence of a similar arrangement in other classes of 

 organized beings, whenever I find that my position needs strength- 

 ening. In many points our materials for working out the sub- 

 ject are so meagre that they require every collateral aid, and it 

 is obvious that the more widely I can show the arrangement to 

 apply, the more will my conclusions, as to their occurrence in the 

 Coleoptera, be strengthened. 



The Indo- African stirps, as its name implies, inhabits Africa 

 south of the Sahara, and India and China south of the Hima- 

 layas, also the Malayan district, the Indian archipelago, and 

 the New Guinea group. This range is less modified by the 

 general introduction of foreign elements than that of the next 

 stirps. 



The Brazilian stirps inhabits South and Central America 

 east of the Andes, and north of the River Plate, and furnishes, 

 moreover, a large share in the constitution of North America, 

 but has also received in return a very perceptible tinge from the 

 microtypal stirps. 



In the microtypal stirps I include the fauna of Europe, Asia 

 north of the Himalayas, Eastern North America, so far as not 

 modified by the Brazilian element ; and, what has less of this 

 strain, the whole of North-west America, California, part of the 

 Mexican fauna, Peru, Chili, the Argentine Republic south of 

 Tucuman, Patagonia, Tierra del Euego, Polynesia, New Zealand, 

 and Australia. 



When I first broached this view to one of my friends, I was 



