28 PERCY SLADEN TRUST EXPEDITION 



Stevensonia-palms and some planted banana-trees. Through the vegetation runs a small 

 mountain-stream forming several pools. Such hollows are excellent collecting-grounds 

 just at sunset, about 6 p.m. In this one might then be seen little groups of a caddis-fly 

 (Leptodermatopteryx tenuis Ulmer) dancing in the air a foot or two above the ground, and 

 a small mayfly, the first species of Ephemeridse ever found in the Seychelles : there were 

 certain Tipulidse hovering over the pools, and Psychodidse sitting or running excitedly in 

 gyrations on the broad banana-leaves. The place was frequented also by another species 

 of caddis-fly*, and, needless to say, by dragon-flies. 



It may be mentioned here that the very numerous mountain-streams of the Seychelles 

 are not tenanted, so far as I could discover, by a rich insect-fauna. There are a few 

 kinds of those Hemiptera which run on the surface of water, and in places considerable 

 numbers were obtained of a large Ranatra-like bug, of a Notonectid bug, and of a 

 Dytiscid beetle. There are also certain insects, including those mentioned in the 

 preceding paragraph, the earlier stages of which are passed in water. But the pools 

 in mountain-streams are almost always crowded with freshwater prawns, which possibly 

 exist there somewhat to the exclusion of aquatic insects. 



Beyond Morne Blanc the road which crosses the island in this district zigzags 

 steeply down to the west coast. It passes through a country with many rises and 

 hollows, covered with very varying types of vegetation. There are cultivated clearings, 

 patches of jungle, expanses almost devoid of soil, where the rock bears only a low dry 

 scrub, and great stretches of the fern Gleichenia dichotoma. This fern, which grows 

 so densely that large beds of it are penetrable only with considerable exertion, abounds 

 in Mahe" and Silhouette, ranging up to great elevations, and covering patches of ground 

 to the complete exclusion of other plants. I often beat and swept in these fern-patches, 

 obtaining various insects from them : notably the only species of Coniopterygid found 

 hitherto in the Seychelles, identified by Dr Giinther Enderlein as Semidalis africana 

 Enderlein. This little creature abounds in the Gleichenia, and appears to be quite 

 confined to the patches of this plant. 



Several kinds of butterflies (Lampides boeticus and L. telicanus among the 

 Lycsenidae, Parnara spp. among the Hesperiidas, and the wide-spread Danaida 

 chrysippus) were numerous in waste pieces of ground overgrown with flowering weeds, 

 as was also a carpenter-bee (Koptorthosoma caffrum L.). Some of these waste patches 

 were covered with a low pink-and-white flowering plant (Vinca rosea L.), among which 

 a little bee (Halictus mahensis Cameron) was especially abundant. The sides of the 

 zigzagging road, also, were the habitation of many Hymenoptera. The metallic-blue 

 fossorial wasp Sceliphron madecassum Grib., might be seen hovering, often in groups 

 of a dozen or so, round projecting granite rocks in the blazing sun. A leaf-cutter bee, 

 Megachile seychellensis Cameron, might be seen entering holes in banks of red earth, 

 and two other species of the genus were found in the same locality. From these same 

 banks I also obtained an occasional Odynerus, though nearly all of these wasps which I 

 saw in the Seychelles, were hovering round the outside of houses in the town and other 



* Herr Georg Ulnier (Hamburg) has worked out these Trichoptera, of which T obtained six species, all new. 



