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Show 448 DR. F. B. WHITE ON THE [May 7' abundant now in the island ; in each case where I met with only one specimen, it turned out to be a new species. It is therefore not at all improbable that, like the native plants and the Snails, which we know are fast disappearing, some having gone entirely, the Spiders, for some cause or other, are also yielding up their native land to foreign invaders." Mr. Wollaston, whose painstaking investigations of the faunas of the North Atlantic islands, and careful study of the Coleoptera of St. Helena especially qualified him to give an opinion on this subject, thus writes regarding the Beetles1:-" The whole of the 129 species to which I have just alluded are, with a single exception (the Chilo-menes lunata, Fab.), absolutely peculiar to St. Helena; so that the question of geographical distribution would seem to be well-nigh ' nipped in the bud.' Moreover, from all that I know of the South- African Coleoptera it has almost nothing in common with these 129 aboriginal St.-Helenians, which stand out singly, as it were, and alone, related more or less inter se, but unrelated for the most part, to any recognized continental forms. It is true that two of the most significant of the Rhynchophorous types-namely, Nesiotes (of the Tanyrhynchidee) and"Acarodes (of the Anthribiidee) -are allied conspicuously to Eehinosoma and Xenorchestes of the Madeiran archipelago ; but if any more successful generalizer than myself can develop much from these points of quasi-contact, he is quite welcome to the result. So far as I can understand the evidence before me, any unprejudiced inquiry into the ' origin ' (as usually understood by that term) of these St.-Helenian Coleoptera, does not elicit, in reply, so much as even an echo; for not only are they endemic (in the strictest sense of the word), but an overwhelming majority of them are attached (or were so originally) to trees and shrubs which would seem to exist nowhere in the world except on this remote rock, 1200 miles from the nearest point of the African coast, surrounded by an all but unfathomable ocean, and which has every appearance of having been piled up by successive erruptions into ,a basaltic mass at no period very considerably larger than that which we now see. 'Whence then, came its fauna and flora,' are enigmas which I cannot presume to answer on any known principles of derivation and descent. To a mind which, like my own, can accept the doctrine of creative acts as not necessarily ' unphilosophical,' the mysteries, however great, become at least conceivable ; but those which are not able to do this may perhaps succeed in elaborating some special theory of their own, which, even if it does not satisfy all the requirements of the problem, may at least prove convincing to themselves. The St.-Helena fauna cannot, I think, be said to have had much light yet thrown upon it as regards its actual ' origin' (except, perhaps, in so far as m y individual opinions on the subject may be accepted by others who are predisposed to receive them) ; but its primitive (or at all events remote) state is another matter, and appears to be capable of some real elucidation from the facts to which we have access." 1 Coleoptera Sancta*-Helenae, p. xix. |
