ess in having sent me your work on
the "Immigration of the Norwegian Flora," which has interested me in the
highest degree. Your view, supported as it is by various facts, appears
to me the most important contribution towards understanding the present
distribution of plants, which has appeared since Forbes' essay on the
effects of the Glacial Period.

LETTER 388. TO AUG. FOREL. Down, June 19th, 1876.

I hope you will allow me to suggest an observation, should any
opportunity occur, on a point which has interested me for many
years--viz., how do the coleoptera which inhabit the nests of ants
colonise a new nest? Mr. Wallace, in reference to the presence of such
coleoptera in Madeira, suggests that their ova may be attached to the
winged female ants, and that these are occasionally blown across the
ocean to the island. It would be very interesting to discover whether
the ova are adhesive, and whether the female coleoptera are guided by
instinct to attach them to the female ants (388/1. Dr. Sharp is good
enough to tell us that he is not aware of any such adaptation. Broadly
speaking, the distribution of the nest-inhabiting beetles is due to
co-migration with the ants, though in some cases the ants transport the
beetles. Sitaris and Meloe are beetles which live "at the expense of
bees of the genus Anthophora." The eggs are laid not in but near the
bees' nest; in the early stage the larva is active and has the instinct
to seize any hairy object near it, and in this way they are carried by
the Anthophora to the nest. Dr. Sharp states that no such preliminary
stage is known in the ant's-nest beetles. For an account of Sitaris and
Meloe, see Sharp's "Insects," II., page 272.); or whether the larvae
pass through an early stage, as with Sitaris or Meloe, or cling to the
bodies of the females. This note obviously requires no answer. I trust
that you continue your most interesting investigations on ants.

(PLATE: MR. A.R. WALLACE, 1878. From a photograph by Maull & Fox.)

LETTER 389. TO A.R. WALLACE.

(389/1. Published in "Life and Letters," III., page 230.)

(389/2. The following five letters refer to Mr. Wallace's "Geographical
Distribution of Animals," 1876.)

[Hopedene] (389/3. Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood's house in Surrey.), June 5th,
1876.

I must have the pleasure of expressing to you my unbounded admiration
of your book (389/4. "Geographical Distribution," 1876.), though I have
read only to page 184--my object hav