10 Mr Alfred E. Wallace on some Anomalies 



be looked upon as the rightful owners of the soil, and should 

 determine the position of their country in our system of 

 Zoological geography. 



My friend, Mr Bates, has kindly furnished me with some 

 facts as to the entomology of Chili and south temperate 

 America, which would show that the insects of this region 

 have very little connection with those of tropical America. 



Out of ten genera of butterflies found in Chili, not one is 

 characteristic of tropical America. Four (Colias, Argynnis, 

 Erebia, and Satyrus) are northern forms, only one of which 

 occurs at all in tropical America, and that high up in the 

 Andes ; three others are peculiar to Chili, but have decided 

 north temperate or Arctic affinities ; and three more (An- 

 thocharis, Lyceena, and Polyommatus) are cosmopolitan, 

 but far more abundant in temperate than tropical regions. 

 Judging, therefore, from butterflies only, we should de- 

 cidedly have to place south temperate America in the Ne- 

 arctic region, or form it into a region by itself. 



Two important families of Coleoptera, the Geodephaga 

 and the Lamellicornes, furnish different but equally re- 

 markable results. There are 77 genera of these families 

 found in Chili, of which 46 are peculiar to south temperate 

 America, being fths of the wdiole ; 17 are cosmopolitan, 2 

 are north temperate, 10 tropical American, and 1 is African. 



But of the 46 peculiar genera, no less than 10 are closely 

 allied to Australian forms, and 3 to South African, — so that 

 the affinities of these groups of coleoptera are almost as 

 strong to Australia as to tropical America ; next comes 

 South Africa, and, lastly, the north temperate zone ; though 

 as the two genera Carabus and Geotrupes are very extensive 

 and important, and are totally absent from the tropics, but 

 appear again in Chili, the real amount of affinity to northern 

 regions may be taken as somewhat larger. 



Here, then, as only 10 genera out of 77 are common to 

 south temperate and tropical America, and as the remainder 

 have wide-spread affinities — to the northern hemisphere, to 

 Australia, and to South Africa — it would seem impossible, 

 from a consideration of these families of Coleoptera alone, 

 not to separate the south temperate zone of South America 

 as a distinct primary region. 



