336 
ISLAND LIFE. 
[part II. 
numbers are, generally speaking, proportionate to the richness of 
the district and the amount of work bestowed upon it ; Scotland, 
however, giving more than its due proportion in this respect, 
which must be imputed to its really possessing a greater amount 
of speciality. The single peculiar Irish species stands as a monu- 
ment of our comparative ignorance of the entomology of the 
sister isle. The peculiar species of Apion in the Shetland 
Islands is interesting, and may be connected with the very 
peculiar climatal conditions there prevailing, which have led in 
some cases to a change of habits, so that a species of weevil 
(Otiorhynchus maurus ) always found on mountain sides in Scotland 
here occurs on the sea-shore. Still more curious is the occur- 
rence of two distinct forms (a species and a well-marked variety) 
on the small granitic Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel. 
This island is about three miles long and twelve from the coast 
of Devonshire, consisting mainly of granite with a little of the 
Devonian formation, and the presence here of peculiar insects 
can only be due to isolation with special conditions, and im- 
munity from enemies or competing forms. When we consider 
the similar islands off the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, with 
the Isle of Man and the Scilly Islands, none of which have 
been yet thoroughly explored for beetles, it is probable that 
many similar examples of peculiar isolated forms remain to be 
discovered. 
Mr. Bye hardly thinks it possible that the Dromius vectensis 
can really be peculiar to the Isle of Wight, although it is abun- 
dant there, and has never been found elsewhere ; but the case 
of Lundy Island renders it less improbable ; and when we con- 
sider that the Arum italicum , Calamintha sylvatica, and perhaps 
one or two other plants are found nowhere else in the British Isles, 
we must admit that the same causes which have acted to restrict 
the range of a plant may have had a similar effect with a beetle. 
I must also notice the Cathormiocerus maritimus, because 
its only near ally inhabits the coasts of the Mediterranean ; and 
it thus offers an analogous case to the small moth, Elachista 
rufocinerea, which is found only in Britain and the extreme 
South of Europe. Looking, then, at what seem to me the proba- 
bilities of the case from the standpoint of evolution and natural 
