154 [Dccciuber, 



out accidentally from losing myself in the wood. There were high 

 trees partly burnt and cut, small bushes about 15 feet high, a little 

 maize, and a little cultivation. Acrcea certainly did swarm here. I 

 caught them, looked at them, and looked at them again in uncertainty. 

 I could make nothing out of them ; I am afraid I may have let some 

 good species escape, but one cannot do evei-y thing. I feel sure I saw 

 A. Hova, but it is difficult to say ; it had the flight of a very large 

 Acrcea, high up in the bushes. There was a beautiful brown Acrcea, of 

 which I only got two. 



" As to the Charaxes, there is a grand time for somebody, I am 

 sure. I could see them flymg about, and settling on the trees beyond 

 my reach ; I never got one, except one that a native picked off a twig, 

 a common one. I believe, in the hot and rainy season, wonders might 

 be done there, and I have no doubt I should have done it, had I had 

 health ; as it was, I was only there in the dry season, when it rained oc- 

 casionally. There was no beetle life, and, in the hot weather, it is 

 said to be in thousands. I believe any one might have collected 500 

 butterflies in a day. 



" Early in the morning, when the natives dig up their crops, the 

 butterflies come in thousands for the first half -hour : they are more 

 like a swarm of bees than anything else, but they are almost all com- 

 mon ; and often as I stayed to watch them and wonder, with the secret 

 hope of getting a rare one, I never succeeded. Still I believe, from the 

 proximity of Madagascar, that it will be found almost a new district 

 for animals, birds and insects. The heads of antelopes that I saw at 

 Dr. Kirk's were such as I had never seen before, and I know them 

 pretty well ; the account of the few birds I got, I hear is favourable. 



" There is another side to all this. I went out myself with as 

 fine a constitution as any man ever had, I lived perfectly temperately, 

 and the result is, for the last eight weeks I have been laid on my back 

 on the borders of eternity. Let any one count the cost." 



The following are the new species of Acrcea above referred to : — 



ACE^A ZONATA. 



Upper-side semi-transparent, rufous-orange. Anterior wing with 

 a black spot at the middle of the cell, and a black band at the end of 

 the cell which crosses the wing to the anal angle ; the costal margin 

 brown, the outer margin broadly brown, traversed by a series of eight 

 rufous-orange spots. Posterior wing with a minute black spot at the 

 end of the cell, a transverse band beyond the middle, the nervures 

 below it and the outer margin dark brown. 



Exp. 2 10 inches. * 



