THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 153 



Half a mile easterly from the school-house we come to a gully, 

 formerly a road leading to a long-disused mill on the river, and 

 this is as beautiful and natural as of yore. All the old trees and 

 shrubs are still there, but the walking is more difficult, owing to 

 the unchecked growth of the sweetbriar. Arriving at the river it 

 was at once apparent that, whether from the dry season or other 

 cause, the flowering shrub, Kunzea peduncidaris, on which we 

 principally depended for our success, was past its prime ; so also 

 were Leptospermum scoparium and L. lanigerum ; and hence, 

 although we most diligently used our umbrellas, very few beetles 

 were shaken into them, but of a small dipterous fly every shake pro- 

 duced thousands. Of Buprestidse we can only record Curis calop- 

 tera, Stigmodera amplipennis, iS. excavata, *S'. nasuta, S. Austral- 

 asice, S. varia, S. amphichroa, S. cruentata, and S. sexguttata ; of 

 Longicorns — Phoracantha recurva, P. quinaria, Distichocera par, 

 Pempsamaera pygmcea, Sylletus grammicns, and Obrida fascialis • 

 of Cleridse — Eleale aspera, E. virides, E. viridicollis; and of 

 Cetonidge — Schizorhina Australis and S. punctata. On Acacia 

 moUissima we found a few of the beautiful Curculio, Acan- 

 tholophtcs spectabilis, a beetle which many years ago used to be 

 very plentiful on the young Acacias around Melbourne. In vain 

 we looked for the rare Macrones exilis, Tritocosmea roei, Trubea, 

 and Mecynopus semivitreus, which on former visits we have found 

 feeding on the Kunzea ; and as for the still more rare Copto- 

 cercus, sp. (?), for which we tried and tried until our arms ached, 

 not a single specimen were we rewarded with. This latter beetle, 

 the specific name of which we are not certain, has never, so 

 far as we know, been taken anywhere else than from off the Cal- 

 listemon salignus, or Bottle Brush ; nor are we aware of any 

 specimens having been taken by other than ourselves and the late 

 Mr. D. Kershaw, and always in this particular locality. Knowing 

 that the Buprestis beetle, Stigmodera avip)lipennis, bred in the 

 Acacia verticillata, we looked for their, to us, well-known signs ; 

 but although we saw many of these we secured only one or two of 

 the perfect insects, and none of the larvae, which, it being rather too 

 late, had already completed their various changes and emerged. We, 

 however, secured a few other larvae in this Acacia, and are in hopes 

 they will prove to be some rather rare beetles. The flowers of 

 Pomaderris apetala, on which very few insects appear to feed, 

 yielded us nothing, and, with the exception of spiders, whose great 

 numbers may be the explanation, scarcely anything was seen 

 under the loose bark. Of ground beetles, owing to the unusual 

 dryness, we did not expect to see many, and, therefore, were not 

 disappointed. Of course, we could have got two or three species 

 of Adeleum, as also one of Promecoderus (P. Brunnicornis), all 

 of which are obtainable during the greater portion of, if not the 

 whole, of the year. Hymenoptera were far more scarce than 



