( liv ) 



The small forms are so obscure and closely allied that I am 

 no longer attemptmg to keep track of the species, but am just 

 setting up whatever looks good ; no doubt, collecting in this 

 way, there will be many duplicates of some species, but you 

 stand less chance of losing rarities. 



"The Hemiptera, Homoptera, and Coleoptera are coming in 

 slowly, but hardly a day passes without some novelty in these 

 orders, and we still get new spiders occasionally. On the 

 whole, counting the things already sent, I calculate that we 

 can hardly have less than 2000 species of insects and spiders 

 from this island, and the species are working up faster than 

 even before, only there are hardly any large things. Perhaps 

 the paucity of large species in my collection is not significant 

 in itself ; it arises partly from the fact that many groups con- 

 taining showy species are not found here at all, or are very 

 poorly represented ; for instance, the Wasps, Butterflies, and 

 Bombycid(E in Lepidoptera ; Fieibiviidce in Hemiptera ; Lamel- 

 licorns, Longicorns, and BuprestidcB in Coleoptera; and all the 

 Odonata. Then again, when there are few large species, 

 I naturally collect the small ones more thoroughly. In the 

 Orthoptera, I think the proportion of large species is greater 

 than elsewhere ; and in such families as the Weevils, Bees, 

 PentatomidtB, &c., which have a tolerable representation here, 

 I think the average size will be as great as elsewhere in 

 Tropical America. On the other hand, I think the proportion 

 of small spiders is greater here than I have found it elsewhere, 

 and some are extremely minute ; one adult female, which I 

 found with eggs, — a true spider, — is no larger than this [ .] . 



"For the sake of an early comparison, I paid a man a few 

 dollars to make me a collection of Spiders in Grenada. Taken 

 with my collections from the Keys, these things from Grenada 

 are extremely interesting, and not a little puzzling. The 

 majority are like those of this island, but, as many are house 

 spiders or common species that are widely spread, this does 

 not stand for much. Four are new to me ; one is an unusually 

 large species of a genus found here ; the others are repre- 

 sentatives of as many very peculiar genera, which I have seen 

 nowhere else in Tropical America. So far as this collection 

 goes, there is not the slightest hint of a resemblance to the 



