AND PORTO SANTO. 75 



on the beach; I looked carefully under the fins for parasitical 

 crabs, but found none: the squalus s^goena is common, and eaten. 

 Only five indigenous plants appeared to characterize the vegetation 

 of the immediate environs ; the verbena officinalis, oxalis luteola, 

 bidens radiata, calendula officinalis, and solanum pubescens; the 

 leaves of the latter are applied to cuts by the peasantry. To 

 these may be added the datura metel (introduced and naturalized), 

 the tropceolum maj'us and raphanus sativus, which have probably 

 strayed from the gardens. There being nothing better to engage 

 my attention, I commenced a hunt after insects, but having no net, 

 I caught but few; among them, were what appeared to me to 

 be a new species of locusta and gri/llus, fig. 21, if not of agrion and 

 iulus. Specific descriptions of the 46,000 insects already known, 

 (to say nothing of the 4000 birds) could not be very conveniently 

 comprised in the library of an African traveller. But those I 

 found are all drawn, and may be referred to by the Entomologist. 

 The bee of Madeira is evidently a different species to that of 

 Europe, and seems to be the link between it and the Senegal 

 bee, imperfectly described in a memoir of Latreilles, from a spe- 

 cimen brought home by Adanson, but in too bad a state to be 

 figured^. One of the spiders may be a new species of mygale; 

 but the most curious I met with, is an arachne^, which does not 

 spin any web, but retires into a small round hole with its prey ; 

 it apparently fascinates the fly, then jumps upon it, remains suck- 

 ing it for some time, and at length carries it away. 



" Colour black ; head, body, and legs, nearly covered with light yellowish brown 

 hairs, forming stripes of that colour between each band and division of the body. 



> Fig. 24, body brown; head black, with a white speck; eyes set all round the head ; 

 a few scattered hairs on the head and legs. Also an arachne of a pale bright green ; 

 fig. 23, the last joint of each claw, pale brown; eyes set in the form of a crescent; an 

 oblong semicircle of dark brown on the back ; and four little spots of the same 

 colour. 



L 2 



