from one estate to another, on the clothes of human beings, and in various other ways, which will readily suggest themselves.  Dr. Gardner, after a careful consideration and minute examination of estates, arrived at the conclusion, that all remedies suggested up to that time had utterly failed, and that none at once cheap and effectual was likely to be discovered.  He seems also to have been of opinion that the insect was not under human control; and that even if it should disappear, it would only be when it should have worn itself out as other blighte have been known to do in some mysterious way.  Whether this may prove to be the case or not, is still very uncertain, but every thing observed by Dr. Gardner tends to indicate the permanency of the pest.

* * * * *

List of Ceylon Insects.

For the following list of the insects of the island, and the remarks prefixed to it, I am indebted to Mr. F. Walker, by whom it has been prepared after a careful inspection of the collections made by Dr. Templeton, Mr. E.L.  Layard, and others:  as well as of those in the British Museum and in the Museum of the East India Company.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The entire of the new species contained in this list have been described in a series of papers by Mr. WALKER in successive numbers of the Annals of Natural History (1858-61):  those, from Dr. TEMPLETON’S collection of which descriptions have been taken, have been at his desire transferred to the British Museum for future reference and comparison.]

“A short notice of the aspect of the island will afford the best means of accounting, in some degree, for its entomological Fauna:  first, as it is an island, and has a mountainous central region, the tropical character of its productions, as in most other cases, rather diminishes, and somewhat approaches that of higher latitudes.

“The coast-region of Ceylon, and fully one-third of its northern part, have a much drier atmosphere than that of the rest of its surface; and their climate and vegetation are nearly similar to those of the Carnatic, with which this island may have been connected at no very remote period.[1] But if, on the contrary, the land in Ceylon is gradually rising, the difference of its Fauna from that of Central Hindustan is less remarkable.  The peninsula of the Dekkan might then be conjectured to have been nearly or wholly separated from the central part of Hindustan, and confined to the range of mountains along the eastern coast; the insect-fauna of which is as yet almost unknown, but will probably be found to have more resemblance to that of Ceylon than to the insects of northern and western India—­just as the insect-fauna of Malaya appears more to resemble the similar productions of Australasia than those of the more northern continent.

[Footnote 1:  On the subject of this conjecture see ante, p. 60.]