TEE SAVING OF VANISEING DATA. 225 



In a letter to S. D. Sharp, dated Lihue, Kauai, July 21, 1896, Mr. 

 Perkins states: 



This place has been a dead failure. The country where I camped here was 

 a low-lying, densely-covered forest hog-land, at first sight a paradise for Cara- 

 bida3 (ground beetles), and differing from any other place known to me. Its 

 fauna is entirely lost forever. I turned during my stay thousands of lop, any 

 one of which at 4,000 feet would have yielded Carabidae. Of all these there was 

 not a single one under which Pheidole megacephala had not a nest, and I never 

 beat a tree without this ant coming down in scores. 



This is an introduced ant which is overrunning the islands, and which 

 exterminates the native insect fauna. Mr. Perkins finds that earwigs 

 alone can withstand this ant, and his only chance of collection of 

 endemic insects is to get ahead of the ant. In the ' Eeport ' for 1900 it 

 is stated that on his return from a visit to England Mr. Perkins found 

 that great changes had taken place in the islands during his absence, 

 and that the forests were beiug extensively destroyed and replaced by 

 sugar-cane. The grants by the British Association have been supple- 

 mented by grants from the Government Grant Committee administered 

 by the Eoyal Society, and from the trustees of the Bernice P. Bishop 

 Museum in Honolulu. Eight parts of the three volumes intended to 

 form the ' Fauna Hawaiiensis' have now been published and others are 

 in the press. The inception of this investigation was due to Professor 

 Alfred Newton, and if he had not persisted until he succeeded, com- 

 paratively little would ever have been known about the fauna of the 

 Hawaiian islands. 



In a communication to Nature* Mr. Perkins says that few countries 

 have been more plagued by the importation of insect pests than the 

 Hawaiian Islands ; in none have such extraordinary results followed the 

 introduction of beneficial species to destroy them, of the effect of which 

 he gives many instances. He goes on to say : 



Why has the success of the imported beneficial insects been so pronounced 

 here, while in other countries it has been attained in a comparatively small 

 measure? The reason, I think, is sufficiently obvious. The same causes which 

 have led to the rapid spread and excessive multiplication of injurious introduc- 

 tions, have operated equally on the beneficial ones that prey upon them. The 

 remote position of the islands and the consequently limited fauna, giving free 

 scope for increase to new arrivals, the general absence of creatures injurious to 

 the introduced beneficial species, and the equality of the climate, allowing of 

 almost continuous breeding, may well afford results which could hardly be 

 attained elsewhere on the globe. The keen struggle for existence of continental 

 lands is comparatively non-existent, and, so far as it exists, is rather brought 

 about by the introduced fauna than by the native one. 



To this Mr. Howard adds: 



* Nature, March 25, 1897, p. 499. 

 vol. lxii. 15. 



