602 pkesident's address. 



Atlautie, I have forgotten my old friends; but the fact is that I was unwilling 

 to wiite to you until I had carefully studied the "Introduction' [Kirby and Spenee's 

 Introduction to Entomology] and had enabled myself to give you some opinion 

 upon this very useful and laborious work, for which I beg leave to return you 

 best thanks. It contains, indeed much information quite new to me; and although 

 we differ in some important points, time. I have no doubt, will set all things right. 

 "The climate has, I thank God, hitherto agreed with me much better than 

 that of England : but there is a languor attendant upon every kind of exertion, 

 which makes reading or study here a very different thing from what it is in 

 England. 



"This is a good ])!ace for Wading Birds, Lizards, Butterflies, and Sphinges, 

 but apparently nothing else. 



"I live in the country, where I have a large house and garden; this is my 

 pi'ineipal amusement, as I take great pleasure in cultivating Orchideae, particu- 

 larly those which are parasitical on trees. The disagreeables are ants, scorpions, 

 mygales, and musquetoes. The latter were quite a pest on my first arrival within 

 the tropics; but now I mind them about as much as I did gnats in England."' 

 Then follow some particulars of his having been stung by an immense scorpion 

 and a large wasp [Freeman's Life of Kirby, p. 422]. 



This letter is of special interest, because of the reference to his interest in 

 horticulture. The garden would be at Guanabanacoa. For in his description of 

 a curious spider with two eyes, Nops Guanabanacoae, g.et sp.n., in the Annals 

 of Nat. History [Vol. ii.. No. 7, p. 1, 1839] published after his return to England, 

 he says — "the trivial name of this remarkable spider will serve to commemorate 

 Guanabanacoa, the place where first I found it, a place in which I long resided, 

 devoting many deliglitful hours to the science of natural history." 



Natural history soon began to claim his attention in his leisure, but in the 

 absence of any other records, the particulars have to be gleaned from his own 

 papers, or from those who recorded or described the collections or specimens he 

 sent to England. 



Specimens of lizards, bats, and of forty-five species of birds were seut to 

 England, exhibited at meetings of the Zoological Club of the Linnean Society, and 

 recorded by Bell, Horsfield, and Vigors in the Zoological Journal [Vol. iii., pp. 

 235, 236, and 434 (1828)] . J. E. Gray, at a later date, described a collection of 

 Cuban bats sent by W. S. Macleay ; and he mentions also a foetal specimen of a 

 dolphin [Ann. Nat! Hist., Vol. iv.,"Sept., 1839, p. 16]. 



The curious rodent, Capromiis, birds, and Annulosa, especially interested W. 

 S. Macleay. His acquisition of a co]iy of Oviedo's book "Historia general de las 

 'Indias,' " the oldest and one of the rarest and best books on the Natural History 

 of the West Indies, published in 1547, led him to ' take an interest in the remark- 

 able rodents referable to the genus Capromi/K. In the first of two notes about 

 them, published in the Zoological .Journal [Vols, iv., 269; v., 179, 1829-30] he 

 says: "Having now three species of Copmnuis alive in my garden, and ready to 

 be sent by the first opportunity to the Zoological Society, I shall avail myself of 

 the information to be found in Oviedo, to correct some of the absurd errors which 

 have been lately propagated on the sub.i'ect of this genus." He records also his 

 own observations on the animals in their native haunts. It appears, from the 

 second note, that he sent five living specimens by the "Aurora Frigate," hut that 

 they did not survive the voyage. 



