24 
SOUTH-AFRICAN BUTTERFLIES. 
actually produced no less than 700 species. Mr. Wallace notes 
{G-eogr. Distrih. of Animals, ii. p. 14) that no less than about 200 
genera, or not far short of half the total number (431) of known 
genera, are peculiar to the Neotropical Kegion ; and Mr. Kirby's Cata- 
logue shows that more than half the entire number of known species 
have been found within its limits. The Oriental Kegion, consisting of 
Tropical Asia and the Indo-Malayan Archipelago, holds the second 
place, and yields an immense variety of forms, — Mr. Wallace observing 
that a few months' assiduous collecting in any of the Malay islands 
will produce from i 5 o to 250 species, and that thirty or forty species 
may be obtained any fine day in good localities (Tropical Nature, &c., 
p. 74, 1878). Africa, so far as we know at present, is, in comparison 
with the two regions just mentioned, very poor ; the whole number 
recorded for the Ethiopian Kegion (which extends to the Tropic of 
Cancer northward, and includes Madagascar and various groups of 
small islands) by Mr. W. F. Kirby being but little over a thousand 
species. The Australian Kegion would be less productive than the 
Ethiopian were the continent of Australia alone to be considered, its 
poverty in butterflies, except in the north and north-east, being most 
surprising ; but when with Mr. Wallace we add the very rich Austro- 
Malayan islands, the number and variety are greatly augmented, — 
New Guinea, the Moluccas, and Celebes yielding a long series of 
splendid forms. The Patearctic Kegion, notwithstanding its enormous 
area, lies wholly beyond the Tropic; and although its western half 
(Europe and the Mediterranean basin) has been incomparably better 
searched than any other division of the globe, it has not yielded more 
than about five hundred species.^ 
The Nearctic or North American Kegion, in strange contrast to the 
Neotropical, is no richer than the Palaearctic one, except in the fact 
that, while the number of known species in the two regions is about 
the same, the area of the Nearctic is estimated at less than half that 
of the Palsearctic Kegion. Generically, all the forms of the former are 
represented in the latter region. 
Oceanic islands are particularly poor in Khopalocera, whether lying 
in tropical or temperate latitudes, and in this respect — as, indeed, in 
regard to their entire fauna and flora — exhibit (as Darwin, and espe- 
cially Wallace, have shown) a marked contrast to both recent and 
ancient " continental " islands, viz., those which have at some time 
been connected with a continent. All the isolated Atlantic islands, 
and many of the very numerous Pacific ones, are cases in point, the 
few butterflies they possess being unmistakably, for the most part, 
chance settlers from other lands — usually the nearest continent — or 
^ In his most careful and invaluable Synonymic Catalogue of Diurnal Lepidoptcra 
(1871), and Supplement (1877). 
^ Dr. Staudinger's very thorough Catalog der Lepidopteren des Europcsischen Faimen- 
gehiets (1871) gives 456 species arranged in 44 genera. 
