90 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



but I cannot detect an eye in any of them. They have 

 beautiful, short, clubbed antennae, and are altogether very 

 interesting little fellows." I see no alternative, therefore, but 

 to conclude that the mole's flea is perfectly without eyes; and 

 one sees at once that there is small need of the power of 

 vision in an insect that is never destined lo see the light 

 of day except through the intervention of the raole-catcher. 

 To a 7?o/«-entoraologist it must appear strange that the name 

 of "mole's flea" and " Pulex Talpoe" should have been 

 applied to a flea never found on the mole ; but entomo- 

 logists will know that this is in strict accordance with the 

 lime-honoured custom in the science, for an entomologist will 

 frequently name an insect after any plant, rather than that on 

 which it feeds. Therefore the name of " mole's flea," having 

 been given by Samouelle, and endorsed by Curtis, Duges, 

 Weslwood, and Walker, must be retained, however inappro- 

 priate for the usurper, and a new name must be invented for 

 this real inhabitant of mole-skin. Having virtually declined the 

 practice of insect-naming aud description-writing for thirty- 

 six years, I shall not now resume it; so leave the christening 

 of this little stranger to those who covet, and claim, and not 

 unfrequently do battle lor, such barren honours. — Edward 

 Newman. 



Bugs Introduced into Africa by the Arabs. — Inside, the 

 dwellings of the natives are clean and comfortable ; and 

 before the Arabs came bugs were unknown. As I have 

 before observed, one may know where these people have 

 come from, by the presence or absence of these nasty vermin. 

 — '• Livingstone s Last Journals^ vol. ii, p. 33. 



Insect Fauna of St. Helena. — The following brief extract 

 is part of a letter from Mr. Waller lo Dr. Hooker, and is 

 reprinted from 'Nature' for February 3rd: — "The insect 

 flora[?], although so extremely liujited that I have not in 

 nearly even three months collected more in Coleoptera than 

 one hundred and fifty species, still continues to keep up its 

 character for eccentricity — ringing the changes on some half 

 a dozen types (cliiefly Rhyncophorous) to a marvellous 

 extent. We seem, indeed, never to exhaust them, turning 

 up new species almost every time that we can secure a hard 

 day's work on the Composites ridge. Having ultimately to 

 work them out, 1 lake scores of specimens, and must have 

 mounted carefully some six or seveu thousand already." 



