Galapagos Travel Blog

I took great pains in collecting the insects, but excepting Tierra
del Fuego, I never saw in this respect so poor a country. Even in
the upper and damp region I procured very few, excepting some
minute Diptera and Hymenoptera, mostly of common mundane forms. As
before remarked, the insects, for a tropical region, are of very
small size and dull colours. Of beetles I collected twenty-five
species (excluding a Dermestes and Corynetes imported wherever a
ship touches); of these, two belong to the Harpalidae, two to the
Hydrophilidae, nine to three families of the Heteromera, and the
remaining twelve to as many different families. This circumstance
of insects (and I may add plants), where few in number, belonging
to many different families, is, I believe, very general. Mr.
Waterhouse, who has published an account of the insects of this
archipelago, and to whom I am indebted for the above details,
informs me that there are several new genera; and that of the
genera not new, one or two are American, and the rest of mundane
distribution. (17/4. "Annals and Magazine of Natural History"
volume 16 page 19.) With the exception of a wood-feeding Apate, and
of one or probably two water-beetles from the American continent,
all the species appear to be new.