426 Mr. H. Scott on 



ant, &c. In another place in the same paper (p. 407) 

 spiders, slugs, and planarians are mentioned as being fonnd 

 in Bromeliacese ; and (on p. 411) Morton is cited as writing 

 (in litt) that Fritj^ Muller once sent him cases of caddis-fly 

 larvffi found in epiphytic bromeliads in the primseval forests 

 of Southern Brazil.^ 



To quote again 'the work ^ of Dr. Ohaus : in Brazil he 

 found that large Bromeliacese, growing both on trees and 

 on steep rock-faces, were rich hunting-grounds, containing 

 beetles (particularly Tenebrionidse), many kinds of spiders, 

 mvriapods, Peripatus, and numbers of Blattidse. In the 

 water in the bromeliads he frequently found tree-frogs, 

 which deposit their spawn there ; and he considers this not 

 an exceptional but a normal habit, persisted in even when 

 terrestrial pieces of water are quite close at hand. In a 

 later record f of South American travel he records finding a 

 dung-beetle, Aphenyium setninudum, Bates, usually several 

 specimens together, in large Bromeliacese. These lists are 

 summarized to show the extent of the bromeliad fauna, and 

 for the sake of comparison with the results of my bromeliad 

 collecting in the West Indies, given below. 



My own interest in the matter was roused by my 

 experiences in the Seychelles Islands during the Percy 

 Sladen Trust Expedition of 1908-9. Some of the most 

 interesting species of beetles were found there between leaf- 

 bases of certain endemic species of palms and Pandamis, 

 notably a true water-beetle (Dytiscid) in the latter. In 

 the paper describing my experiences a short account J is 

 given of this form of collecting, with a list of the creatures 

 found in leaf-bases of palms and Pandanus : a list which 

 includes earthworms, planarians, snails, woodlice, a scorpion, 

 Lepidopterous and Dipterous larvse, Coleoptera and Coleo- 

 pterous larvse of very different forms, earwigs, and a very 

 peculiar flattened form of cockroach described by Bolivar as 

 a new genus [Hololeptublatta : a find in Pandanus very 

 interesting in connection with the discovery of the interesting 

 new bromeliadicolous cockroach described below) . 



Thus in the tropics of both hemispheres, aiid in other 

 plants besides Bromeliacese, an interesting and largely 

 aquatic or amphibious fauna dwells between the bases of the 

 leaves. Nor does this exhaust the list of curious situations 

 in which aquatic insects have been found in plants. In 



* Stettin, ent. Zeit. 1900, pp. L>1 1,212. 



t Op. cit. 1909, p. 26. 



j Trans. Linn. Soc. London, ser. 2, Zool. vol. xiv. 1910, p. 24. 



