GEOGRAPHICAL ZOOLOGY. 
[PART IV. 
436 
the district in question only forms a part of the Palsearctic 
region, which would thus seem to possess its full proportion of 
the species of this family. Confining ourselves to the generic 
forms, we find far less difference than usual between the 
numbers possessed by the tropical and the temperate regions; 
the richest being the Australian, with 47 genera, 20 of which 
are peculiar; and the poorest the Nearctic, with 24 genera, of 
which 7 are peculiar. The Oriental has 41 genera, 14 of which 
are peculiar; the Neotropical 39, of which the large proportion 
of 18 are peculiar ; the Ethiopian 27, of which 6 are peculiar ; 
and the Palsearctic also 27, but with 9 peculiar. 
A most interesting feature in the distribution of this family, 
is the strong affinity shown to exist between the Australian 
and Neotropical regions, which have 4 genera common to both 
and found nowhere else ; but besides this, the extensive and 
highly characteristic Australian genus, Stigmodera, is closely 
related to a number of peculiar South American genera, such as 
Conognat ha, Hypemntha, Dactylozodes , — the last altogether con- 
fined to Chili and Temperate South America. Here we have 
a striking contrast to the Cetoniidse, and we can hardly help 
concluding, that, as the latter is typically a tropical group, so 
the present family, although now so largely tropical, had an 
early and perhaps original development in the temperate regions 
of Australia, spreading thence to Temperate South America as 
well as to the tropical regions of Asia and Africa. The 
Australian and Oriental regions have 4 genera exclusively in 
common, but they also each possess a number of peculiar or 
characteristic genera, such as the Indo-Malayan Catoxantha 
(which has only a single species in the Moluccas) and nine others 
of less importance ; and the exclusively Austro-Malayan genus, 
Rambus, with five smaller groups, and Cgphogastra , with only 2 
Indo-Malay species. The Oriental and Ethiopian regions are very 
distinct, only possessing the single genus, Sternocera, exclusively 
in common. The Nearctic and Pakearctic are also distinct, only 
one genus, Dicerca , being confined to America (North and South) 
and Europe, a fact which again points to a southern origin for 
this family, and its comparatively recent extension into the 
