INTRODUCTION xxxix 



habits of many of the creatures. I do not feel sure whether the number of really 

 rare species is greater than is the case elsewhere over an eqiial area of land. On large 

 land areas a species may occur in very small numbers, but persistently, over a limited 

 portion of the area, while in other parts removed from this, it may be continually 

 abundant, and small islands do not afford these conditions. On a continental land 

 if one picks out a continuous area, equal in size to one of our islands, there will be 

 found large numbers of rare insects, even in countries much more collected over than 

 the Hawaiian group. It is natural that a collector in a country of great roughness 

 and with extensive virgin forests, collecting in a limited time not only all kinds of 

 insects, but all other land animals, will obtain many unique specimens and also species 

 represented by only one or two examples, both from lack of time to make special 

 search for each particular species and because many insects even though they have 

 no regular season, become more abundant at one period than another and the best time 

 may be missed in a particular locality. Also in pathless forests, where a species is very 

 local, and particular as to the exact condition of its surroundings, it is often not possible 

 to find again the exact place where it happened to be met with. In restricted localities, 

 that have been often visited and collected over, most of the species have at some time 

 or another been found in some numbers and many in abundance. Again the personal 

 equation comes in. The collector particularly fancies certain species and devotes much 

 time to these, while others he is liable to neglect, in so far that he picks up only a 

 few specimens. For this reason the number of specimens cited as captured, in the 

 systematic portion of this work, should not necessarily be regarded as showing the 

 rarity or otherwise of a species. For instance, the conspicuous dark-coloured, day- 

 flying moth, Dasyuris holombra, of which two specimens are recorded, I observed in 

 hundreds, if not thousands, on one occasion, flying in the forest on Maui, but being 

 always hampered with a gun and much occupied with birds, I neglected to catch a 

 series and did not again have the chance. A number of species of beetles, of which 

 I captured long series, are undoubtedly amongst the rarest Hawaiian insects. My 

 experience in this matter is different from Mr Blackburn's, who says " the very 

 common insects" are "few indeed and the rather common ones almost none at all." 

 We should rather say (speaking of course only of the endemic fauna) that the rather 

 common species are numerous, the excessively common ones, less so, though there 

 are a considerable number of these. He also remarks that " It is by no means an 

 unusual thing to pass a morning collecting on the mountains (at any rate on those 

 under 3000 ft. high) and to return home with perhaps two or three specimens secured, 

 and having seen literally nothing else except the few most abundant insects." I am 

 quite sure that this must be due to his having neglected to get beyond the range of 

 the small ant Pheidole mcgacephala, before beginning to collect. A coleopterist of 

 some experience in island work (and perhaps even without this) in the mountains 

 close to Honolulu may take about forty species of beetles in a fair day's work, 



