110 Mr. P. H. Gosse on the Insects of Jamaica. 



I had left England with high expectations of the richness of 

 the West Indian entomology : large and gaily-coloiired beetles, 

 I supposed, would be crawling on almost every shrub, gorgeous 

 butterflies be filling the air, moths be swarming about the 

 forest-edges at night, and caterpillars be beaten from every bush. 

 These expectations were far from being realized ; a few species of 

 butterflies, chiefly Pieris, Callidryas, Terias, Heliconia Charitonia, 

 Argynnis Passifiorce, and A. Delila, Cystineura Mardania, and one 

 or two Nymphalida and Lycanadce, are indeed common enough 

 at all times, and in almost all situations ; others are abundant 

 at a particular season or locality ; but in general butterflies are to 

 be obtained only casually. Moths are still more rare : I had pro- 

 vided myself with bull's-eye lanterns, and repeatedly took them out 

 after nightfall, carefully searching the banks and hedges by the 

 sides of roads, the margins of woods, &c, but never, in this way, 

 took a single specimen. At some seasons, however, as Decem- 

 ber, and more particularly June, on rainy nights, hundreds of 

 little Noctuada>, Pyralidce, Geometrada, Tineadce, &c. fly in at 

 the open windows, and speckle the ceiling, or flutter around the 

 glass-shades with which the candles are protected from the 

 draughts. A good many small beetles, and other things, also 

 fly in on such occasions, and several interesting species I have 

 taken in this way which I never saw at any other time. But in 

 general beetles and the other orders are extremely scarce, and 

 especially Diptera ; I have often been astonished at the paucity 

 of these, as compared with their abundance in Canada, the 

 Southern United States, and other localities (in which I have 

 collected) during the hot weather. One may often walk a mile, — 

 I do not mean in the depth of the forest, but in situations com- 

 paratively open, beneath an unclouded sun, — and not see more 

 than a dozen specimens of all orders. Nor is the beating of 

 bushes productive of insects and their larva?, as I have found 

 it in North America. In Canada I have shaken off perhaps 

 twenty species of lepidopterous larva? in the course of an hour 

 or two on an autumnal morning ; but I think I have seen scarcely 

 more than half that number of caterpillars in Jamaica during a 

 year and a half's collecting. 



To this scarcity of insects however there are two or three local 

 and seasonal exceptions. And this leads me to speak of the prin- 

 cipal localities where I have collected my specimens, and to give a 

 brief description of them, which yet will be but superficial, owing 

 to my ignorance of botany and geology. 



Bluefields. — I begin with this place, because it was the 

 centre of my operations, and my stated residence during my 

 whole sojourn in the island. Bluefields was once a sugar-estate, 

 situated on a gentle slope, about a quarter of a mile from the 



