papers, whicli have appeared in the Annals and Magazine of
Natural History for October, 1869, and December, 1871, demand a
special reference for a study of the Coleoptera of St. Helena,
since they contain much important matter in addition to what
I have here quoted. The Beetles act a much larger part in the
destruction of vegetation than at first sight appears, through their
being nocturnal in their depredations; but the leafless grape vines
• and perforated lace-like leaves of the loquat and oak trees at St.
Helena plainly show how much mischief these little creatures are
capable of working. In a scientific point of view, they form
perhaps the most wonderful portion of this isolated insect fauna;
and Mr. Wollaston writes on the subject as follows: “ That,
a special interest should attach to the productions of any island
which is unusually remote, I need scarcely s ta te ; and when we
recollect that St. Helena is about 1200 miles from the nearest point
of the African continent, we shall at once acknowledge that, for the
geographical naturalist, a more isolated field could hardly perhaps
be found. The manifest deterioration of the Island, in a scientific
point of view, during the last 300 years, is a subject on which I need
not dilate; for the primeval forests which are said to have more or;
less clothed it at its discovery have succumbed beneath the ruthless
hand o f ‘ civilization,’—a few detached patches alone remaining, on
the extreme summit and more inaccessible slopes, to harbour what is
left of that noble fauna the fragments of which are so eccentric that
one cannot but suspect the quondam occurrence of many intermediate
links (now, in all probability, long exterminated) which must, as it
were, have ‘ articulated them on’ to the recognised types with which
we are familiar. Of course in an island of this kind, which has
become intensely cultivated since the period of i ts ' colonization, we
- naturally should not expect to meet with many traces of its primeval
species; for the gradual rooting-out of the native vegetation, and
the introduction, year after year, of more ‘ useful’ plants (chiefly
from European latitudes, hut in the present instance, perhaps, partly
from the Cape of Good Hope), accompanied by their inevitable train
of insect parasites, would so far alter the entire country as to destroy
the apparent peculiarity of its productions, and give a mixed character
to its fauna and flora to which aboriginally it had no kind of
claim. Happily, however, in cases like this, when the species are
brought fairly together, it is usually not difficult for a practised eye
to separate *?* « general way the species which aré strictly endemic
from those which have subsequently been introduced and become
naturalized and thus it is that out of the 95 which are enumerated
in the following catalogue there are only 17 concerning which
Mr. Wollaston (in that particular respect) has much doubt. He
says: “ Indeed what we may term the ‘ «¿//ra-indigenous’ species
speak at once, and unmistakably, for themselves ; and in like
manner as regards those which are more or less cosmopolitan, or
which have found their way, through human agencies, into nearly
every country which has the slightest intercommunication with the
civilized world, there can be no question. These manifest importations
last mentioned, which, however, figure so largely in the St.
Helena list, have no real bearing on the true fauna of any single
region beyond those whence they were originally disseminated, and
for the most part owe their presence in local catalogues merely to
the amount of research which may happen to have been made in the
houses, stores, gardens, and merchandize around the various ports
and towns. Yet, on the other hand, they cannot be omitted or
ignored; for some of th'em may have taken so firm a hold on the
newly acquired area as to occupy a prominent place amongst its
primeval organisms, and even perhaps to have aided indirectly in
their very extermination. This latter contingency, however, seems
to me to represent the exception rather than the ru le; for I have
myself generally observed that the species which are manifestly imported
linger almost exclusively about the ‘ inhabited regions, and
seldom attach themselves to those which are emphatically wild and
uncultivated—and even if in a few instances they should do so, that
their modus vivendi is totally different from that of the veritable
autochthones of the soil.” Mr. Wollaston, bearing in mind the above
considerations, concludes that out of the 95 species, only 42 (or less
than one-half) appear to be unmistakably indigenous, whilst the
evidently imported ones (species which through human agencies
have become widely disseminated over more or less of the civilized
world) amount to about 36, leaving a residuum of 17 which he
would perhaps characterize as “ doubtful,” but the majority of
which, nevertheless, have in all probability been naturalized.
Those which Mr. Wollaston believes to be indigenous, and not
derived from any other country, are the following:—