606 The British Mania . October, 
of Dover is foreign ; what is caught beyond St. George’s 
Channel or the Pentland Frith is still “ British.” Hence 
the boundary might seem to be purely political, and the 
question might arise whether, in case of the secession of 
Ireland from the United Kingdom, its fauna would no longer 
be regarded as “British ” ? 
But even this idea of a political boundary fails us. The 
Channel Islands, though politically British, are to naturalists 
of the class above mentioned, strictly foreign. Hence I feel 
free to maintain that the district to which our friends con- 
fine their attention is neither natural nor political, but a 
jumble of both. 
But leaving this question to be dealt with by the British 
maniac at his leisure, it must be remembered that Britain 
is zoologically merely a much impoverished outlying district 
of the PalsearCtic region and European sub-region, following 
the arrangement of Mr. A. R. Wallace. Its fauna differs 
from that of western and central Europe mainly by deficiency. 
France, Belgium, Germany, possess many species which we 
have not ; we, on the contrary, can claim but very few 
species which are not found in them. Peculiar genera or 
families are out of the question. If, on the contrary, England 
had been separated from the mainland of Europe by a deep 
and ancient sea, as is Madagascar from Africa, and if its 
animal forms had been varied accordingly, the British fauna 
would then have been a worthy subject of the most minute 
study. Or if Britain had held an intermediate position 
between two great regions, or even sub-regions, in which 
their respective faunse met and interpenetrated each other, 
the interest would have been still more profound. But the 
fauna of England depends merely ( a ) on the number of 
species which have survived the glacial epoch ; ( b ) on the 
number of those which, on the cessation of that fearful 
calamity, had time to find their way over before the “ silver 
streak” was interposed between Britain and the Continent; 
and ( c ) on the number which have, since that date, escaped 
destruction by man’s interference. Hence the most faithful 
study of the present British fauna will throw remarkably 
little light on the principles of animal distribution. 
Another objection to the British mania is that the work, 
whatever value it may possess, is overdone. Scores of 
collectors are all aiming at one and the same object, and 
attaining, more or less completely, the very same results, 
doing essentially over and over again what their forerunners 
had already accomplished. 
A further misfortune is that the study of the entomology 
