try, such as the hive-bee, the humble-bees of three or four 

 species which were imported with much difficulty some fifty 

 years ago, and which now abound everywhere, the blow-fly 

 Calliphora erythrocephala Meig., and the drone-fly Eristalis 

 fenax L., intrude themselves on the notice of the entomologist 

 much more than is the case with the endemic insects of the 

 Islands. They are, in fact, fully as much in evidence as the 

 swarms of sparrows, greenfinches, linnets and starlings which 

 have everywhere replaced the far more interesting small 

 native birds, except in the recesses of the " bush " remote 

 from cultivation. 



The history of the progress of our knowledge of the Cole- 

 opterous fauna of New Zealand is very interesting. The first 

 small collection brought to England, which, however, included 

 several of the largest and most conspicuous species, was made 

 during the memorable first visit of Capt. Cook to the islands 

 in 1769-70; and many of these insects, which were described 

 by Fabricius, still exist in the Banksian Collection in the 

 Natural History Museum at South Kensington. Little or 

 nothing was added to our knowledge imtil 1841, when some 

 beetles were collected at Akaroa, Port Chalmers, and the 

 Auckland Islands by the French expedition to the South 

 under Capt. Dumont d'Urville; and a few were also obtained 

 at the Bay of Islands in the North Island by the naturalists 

 of our own Antarctic ships commanded by Capt. Sir James C. 

 Ross. These latter insects, with a few more from other 

 entomologists, among them Charles Darwin in the " Beagle," 

 were described by Adam White in 1846 in the " Zoology of 

 the Voyage of H.M. Ships Erebus and Terror," about 150 

 species of Coleoptera being then known from New Zealand. 

 A small collection from the Christchurch district, sent home 

 in 1867 by Mr. R. W. Fereday, was described in the " Ento- 

 mologist's Monthly Magazine " of that year by Mr. H. W. 

 Bates; and from this date the serious investigation of the 

 New Zealand Coleoptera may be said to have commenced. 

 Several valuable papers by the late Prof. Hutton, Capt. T. 

 Broun, Mr. C. M. Wakefield, and other entomologists resident 

 in New Zealand, as well as by Mr. F. P. Pascoe and Dr. D. 

 Sharp, appeared between 1873 and 1884, mostly in the Trans- 



