That Country, On The Other Hand, Has Developed A
Variety Of Flower-Haunting Chafers And Buprestidae, And Numbers
Of Large And Curious Terrestrial Weevils, Scarcely Any Of Which
Are Adapted To The Damp Gloomy Forests Of New Guinea, Where
Entirely Different Forms Are To Be Found.
There are, however,
some groups of insects, constituting what appear to be the
remains of the ancient population of the equatorial parts of the
Australian region, which are still almost entirely confined to
it.
Such are the interesting sub-family of Longicorn coleoptera -
Tmesisternitae; one of the best-marked genera of Buprestidae -
Cyphogastra; and the beautiful weevils forming the genus
Eupholus. Among butterflies we have the genera Mynes, Hypocista,
and Elodina, and the curious eye-spotted Drusilla, of which last
a single species is found in Java, but in no other of the western
islands.
The facilities for the distribution of plants are still greater
than they are for insects, and it is the opinion of eminent
botanists, that no such clearly-defined regions pan be marked out
in botany as in zoology. The causes which tend to diffusion are
here most powerful, and have led to such intermingling of the
floras of adjacent regions that none but broad and general
divisions can now be detected. These remarks have an important
bearing on the problem of dividing the surface of the earth into
great regions, distinguished by the radical difference of their
natural productions. Such difference we now know to be the direct
result of long-continued separation by more or less impassable
barriers; and as wide oceans and great contrast:
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