PREFACE. 



The fourth plate shows the details of a new little Fish, the 

 Trachinops caudimaculatus (McCoy), sent to me by the Com- 

 missioner of Customs to determine whether it were, as the local 

 fishermen assured him, the young of the Californian Salmon 

 introduced by Sir Samuel Wilson ! — So little are the native Fishes 

 known for want of figures for reference. 



The two following plates continue the illustrations of the 

 valuable specimens and descriptions of the Polyzoa of our coast, 

 given by Mr. MacGillivray. 



The seventh plate shows the two sexes of one of the largest 

 and most elegantly coloured of Victorian Moths, with its larva, 

 pupa and cocoon to illustrate its metamorphoses. 



The eighth plate shows both sexes of the imago, with their 

 larvae and pupse, of two species of butterfly of the genus 

 Pyrameis, which have caused great alarm by appearing, for the 

 two or three weeks of the end of September and beginning of 

 October this year, in countless myriads over a great extent of 

 country, forming heaps on the seashore for miles where drowned 

 and washed in by the tide. (They were accompanied by such 

 clouds of a Moth, Agrotis spina, that the houses were filled and 

 the lights put out by their numbers, and walking was unpleasant 

 fi'om their multitudes in the air ; and the ships for some miles out 

 at sea were blackened with them. ) One of these butterflies, 

 the Pyi'ameis Kershawi (McCoy), has not been figured liefore, 

 having been previously confounded with what was supposed to be 

 the cosmopolitan P. cardui, or so-called Painted-lady Butterfiy, 

 quoted in most books of Physical Geography and Distinbution 

 of Animals as extending from England to Austraha, but which 

 it replaces here. 



The ninth plate shows that curious Crab, the Ibacus Peronii. 



And the tenth plate is in illustration of three species of our 

 most abundant Starfishes, not figured of the coloiu-s of life 

 before. 



Feedekick McCoy. 

 20th October, 1889. 



