24 PERCY SLADEN TRUST EXPEDITION 



level of the plateau (about 1200 feet) to the summit of the highest peak of the island, 

 some 1200 feet above. The forest is entered on the edge of the plateau, and, after first 

 climbing an extremely steep slope, one reaches a fairly level space, the top of a mountain- 

 spur about 150 feet above the starting-point. In the jungles of Silhouette and Mahe, 

 relatively level spaces are worth searching for and making good use of, for there are many 

 places where it is impossible to collect in a satisfactory manner, owing to the precipitous 

 slope of the ground affording no sure foothold, or to the confusion of roots, holes, fallen 

 stems, or great granite boulders, with which the earth is covered. On the level space 

 in question the forest consists of tall trees with very little undergrowth. Owing to its 

 relative dryness, epiphytic mosses and ferns are almost entirely absent, and the workings 

 of termites and ants are much in evidence in dead wood : these insects, particularly the 

 termites, while abounding in the low cultivated country and the lower stretches of forest, 

 become much less abundant in the highest and dampest mountain -jungles. The ground 

 between the tree-trunks is covered with large dead leaves, especially with those of the 

 "bois rouge" (Worniia ferruginea), and of Pandanus Hornei, of which latter there are 

 several magnificent groups with straight stems 50 feet or more in height. When the dead 

 leaves are disturbed, they are found to be the hiding-place of several species of micro- 

 moths, only discovered in this kind of environment. 



Passing on towards the summit of the mountain, a descent is made into a deep 

 gully, on the far side of which the collector pulls himself up a precipitous moss-grown glacis 

 of rock with the aid of the aerial roots of a screw-pine (Pandanus seychellarum), and 

 then gradually enters a second and somewhat damper type of forest. Here are occasional 

 patches of undergrowth of grass and fern, the abode of numerous insects — moths, flies, 

 Homoptera and parasitic Hymenoptera. One traverses stretches of jungle composed 

 almost exclusively of endemic palm-trees, particularly Stevensonia. This brings me to 

 a most important mode of collecting, the search for those creatures which are only found 

 between the bases of the leaves of palms and Pandani. A palm is felled, the head is cut 

 oft* the stem, and the thick broad leaf-bases are then chopped and pulled off one by one 

 beginning with the outermost and lowest : between them is a certain amount of muddy 

 slimy humus, the dwelling-place of a considerable fauna, some of the members of which 

 appear to inhabit these palm-heads only, not having been found by me anywhere else. In 

 this form of collecting Stevensonia gave most abundant booty ; the tall Verschaffeltia also 

 yielded several species ; Roscheria on the other hand gave practically nothing, because its 

 leaf-bases are differently formed, wrapping round one another so tightly as to leave no 

 space for humus between them. In that very part of the Silhouette jungle at present under 

 consideration, on Sept. 22 I felled a Stevensonia about 15 feet high, and obtained from its 

 leaf-bases 80 or more small Coleoptera (little Lamellicorn beetles, a genus of Aphodiini, 

 of a kind scarcely found anywhere but in palm leaf- bases, small Staphylinidse, and others) 

 and small earwigs. On other occasions numbers of small Forficulidse with white tegmina 

 were found between the leaf-bases of Verschaffeltia palms. Many forms are also found 

 between the bases of the leaves of the Pandani. On the same day (Sept. 22) and in the 

 same place I felled a large head of Pandanus Hornei and two heads of P. seychellarum, 

 and worked through them, cutting off the leaves one by one. Between the bases and on 



