120 [May, 1904. 



the head of Port Victoria, a deep inlet in the rugged and mountainous 

 Banks Peninsula, and further improved by the construction of a very 

 fine breakwater. The town is built at the foot of a splendid amphi- 

 theatre of hills, the remains of a vast crater which has long been 

 extinct. On their steep grassy sides there is in {)laces a fair amount 

 of low scrubby "bush," but no trees of any size; and from their 

 summits, 1200 to 1600 feet high, on a clear day, a magnificent view of 

 the city of Christchurch and the broad Canterbury Plains, with their 

 background of snow-tipped mountains and long, gently curving fore- 

 shores, may be obtained. Access to these Plains is easily gained by 

 the railway to Christchurch, which is carried through the hills by a 

 tunnel nearly two miles long. The flat meadows near the city, with 

 their weeping willows, poplars, hawthorn hedges and patches of furze, 

 and the familiar home weeds meeting the eye at every turn to the 

 practical exclusion of every indigenous plant, have a more completely 

 English aspect than any other part of New Zealand that I have seen. 

 Christchurch is a pleasant, thriving, and well-built city, and boasts of 

 an exceedingly fine museum, in which the remains of those strange 

 and gigantic birds the " Moas," so abundant up to a comparatively 

 recent date in the Islands, are especially well represented. The 

 Museum also contains a first-rate collection of New Zealand insects 

 of all orders, to which, thanks to the kindness of the learned and 

 genial Curator, Capt. F. W. Hutton, F.R.S., I was allowed to have 

 unrestricted access at all times. 



Very few insects are apparently to be met with on these plains, 

 but the rugged hillsides behind Lyttelton produce a good many 

 interesting Coleoptera. The commonest and most conspicuous of the 

 Carahidce is the large shining green Trichosternus antarcticus, Chaud., 

 an exceedingly handsome beetle found usually under stones, and in 

 this situation the smaller black Fterostichus suteri, Br., P. procerulus, 

 Br., Dicrochile suhopaca, Bates, and the flat Demetrida picea, Chaud., 

 all occur in some numbers. Three species of the Heteromerous genus 

 Cilihe, tibialis, Bates, granulosa, Breme, and opacula. Bates, the last 

 being the largest and commonest, are found under the loose blocks of 

 lava in plenty, and a fourth smaller species, O. huitoni, Sharp, is 

 apparently restricted to the seashore. Under small pieces of decayed 

 wood in some patches of weather-beaten scrub on the hill-tops I got 

 quite a number of interesting little weevils, Colydiidoe, and Longicorns 

 (Somatidia, &c.), and the curious spiny ,^ of the weevil Psepholax 

 coronatus, White, was foud here in the wood of the " ribbon-bark " 

 tree, Plagianthus hetulinus. At a somewhat lower elevation, beating 



