i8 
Psyche 
[March 
the tip-of-peninsular tract is not a remnant of a larger, continuous 
rain forest but has been constituted or reconstituted separately, by 
gradual accumulation of a limited variety of plants and animals. 
The mid-peninsular rain forests of Cape York are heavier and 
more extensive than the tip-of-peninsular tract, more like the base-of- 
peninsular forests at least superficially, but their flightless Carabidae 
form a second independent faunule. None of the flightless genera 
characteristic of the other rain forests is represented in the mid- 
peninsular system. In their place is a single large species of Parcimirus. 
This is a genus of probably only one, geographically variable species, 
which occurs from the tip of Cape York (and islands off the tip) south 
to below Cairns mainly in good savannah woodland. In most parts 
of its range it apparently does not enter rain forest, but it has done so 
in the mid-peninsular system, where it is now widely distributed. It 
seems to have invaded this system recently. An earlier invasion of the 
tip-of-peninsular rain forest by the ancestral stock of Paranurus may 
have produced Mecynognathus . There is also in the mid-peninsular 
rain forest a flightless Coptocarpus, but it is small and rare and I am 
not sure of its habitat or relationships. And also in this forest is a 
large form of Lesticus chloronotus Chd. It is winged, but its distri- 
bution and behavior suggest that it may eventually become flightless, 
as several stocks of the same genus have done in New Guinea. The 
Carabidae, then, suggest that the mid-peninsular rain forest has not 
been connected with the main base-of-peninsular system but, like the 
tip-of-peninsular tract, has derived or is deriving its flightless Carabi- 
dae independently. 
The rain forest on the Elliot Range is poorly known. The only 
insect collecting ever done in it, so far as I know, was done March 2, 
1958, when my son and I climbed from Double Creek to near the 
peak of Sharp Elliot and worked for three or four hours in the forest 
there. It seemed to be real but rather light rain forest. We found 
there series of two conspicuous flightless Carabidae: a very big Nurus 
and a Notonomus, both endemic. No trace of the four other genera 
(other than N otonomus) discussed above as characteristic of the main 
tropical and subtropical rain forests of Australia was found. Judging 
from my experience elsewhere, we would probably have found speci- 
mens or fragments of other species if the carabid fauna were diverse. 
I think, therefore, that the rain forest of the Elliot Range probably 
has a limited, endemic faunule of flightless Carabidae presumably 
received across a barrier and not by way of continuous rain forest. 
The valley that separates the Elliot Range from the main mountain 
