XI 
SCARCITY OF INSECTS 
253 
suited some of the orders, such as lizards, might have been 
foreseen ; but with respect to frogs, this was not so obvious. 
Beetles occur in very small numbers : it was long before I 
could believe that a country as large as Scotland, covered with 
vegetable productions and with a variety of stations, could be 
so unproductive. The few which I found were alpine species 
(Harpalidse and Heteromidm) living under stones. The vege¬ 
table-feeding Chrysomelidae, so eminently characteristic of the 
Tropics, are here almost entirely absent I saw very few flies, 
butterflies, or bees, and no crickets or Orthoptera. In the pools 
of water I found but few aquatic beetles, and not any fresh¬ 
water shells : Succinea at first appears an exception ; but here 
it must be called a terrestrial shell, for it lives on the damp 
herbage far from water. Land-shells could be procured only 
in the same alpine situations with the beetles. I have already 
contrasted the climate as well as the general appearance of 
Tierra del Fuego with that of Patagonia ; and the difference is 
strongly exemplified in the entomology. I do not believe they 
have one species in common ; certainly the general character of 
the insects is widely different. 
If we turn from the land to the sea, we shall find the latter 
as abundantly stocked with living creatures as the former is 
poorly so. In all parts of the world a rocky and partially 
protected shore perhaps supports, in a given space, a greater 
number of individual animals than any other station. There 
is one marine production, which from its importance is worthy 
of a particular history. It is the kelp, or Macrocystis pyrifera. 
This plant grows on every rock from low-water mark to a great 
depth, both on the outer coast and within the channels. 2 I 
1 I believe I must except one alpine Haltica, and a single specimen of a Melasoma. 
Mr. Waterhouse informs me, that of the Harpalidse there are eight or nine species— 
the forms of the greater number being very peculiar ; of Heteromera, four or five 
species ; of Rhyncophora six or seven ; and of the following families one species in 
each: Staphylinidse, Elateridse, Cebrionidse, Melolonthidse. The species in the 
other orders are even fewer. In all the orders, the scarcity of the individuals is 
even more remarkable than that of the species. Most of the Coleoptera have been 
carefully described by Mr. Waterhouse in the Annals of A 1 at. Hist. 
2 Its geographical range is remarkably wide; it is found from the extreme 
southern islets near Cape Horn, as far north on the eastern coast (according to 
information given me by Mr. Stokes) as lat. 43 0 ,—but on the western coast, as Dr. 
Hooker tells me, it extends to the R. San Francisco in California, and perhaps even 
to Ivamtschatka. We thus have an immense range in latitude ; and as Cook, wdro 
must have been w T ell acquainted with the species, found it at Kerguelen Land, no 
less than 140° in longitude. 
