EIGHT MONTHS' COLLECTING IN THE SEYCHELLES ISLANDS, 1908—1909 33 



or more may hang thus motionless in a row, close enough to one another for their 

 outstretched legs almost to touch. When disturbed they fly off" and disperse, but some 

 generally return soon to the web. Large numbers of them may be sometimes seen thus 

 in a very small area. Their tarsi are white: and as the insects usually hang in rather 

 shady, dark, places, these tarsi catch the eye as a number of isolated white dots. 



Leaving Cascade on January 25 for Port Victoria, I went the next day to the 

 district known as the " Mare aux Cochons*," where I stayed till February 3, occupying 

 a room in a house owned by a firm of Chinese merchants in Port Victoria. The Mare 

 aux Cochons is a very elevated and rugged part of the country, some miles north-west of 

 the district in which I had previously worked while staying near Morne Blanc. It has 

 several hill-streams, flowing in part of their course through what might almost be termed 

 gorges, and the mountains bear fine stretches of wild forest. The country is very rough 

 with extremely steep slopes, and highly fatiguing to traverse. It is of a type in some 

 respects unlike anything I had seen before, and well repaid entomological investigation. 

 It is somewhat to be regretted that time allowed only of a short stay there. 



A number of trees of the " bois de fer " ( Vateria seychellarum Dyer) grew near to 

 the house. The species is peculiar to the Seychelles, and I was informed that this is 

 the only locality where it still exists. Many insects were collected among these trees, 

 including a species of Longicorn beetle which, even if not actually confined to the "bois 

 de fer," had at any rate not been found by me in any numbers elsewhere. On two 

 afternoons I worked in a patch of secondary forest, finding interesting Coleoptera and 

 Homoptera on the leaves of the young palms, especially rather late in the afternoon. 

 Several excursions were made into the high forests, including a climb to the summit 

 of a peak standing above Anse Major. This peak is covered with a dense forest of living 

 capucin trees, and from the top of a great tabular rock lying among them one gets a most 

 curious view over the dense foliage of the tree-tops, an expanse of big, dull blue-green 

 leaves : one or two individuals of the butterfly Euplcea mitra were flying over them. On 

 this summit the little black Hydrophilid beetles were again found among dead capucin 

 leaves on the ground, and many other interesting specimens were obtained. 



In the marsh which is the Mare aux Cochons proper, at an elevation of 1500 feet or 

 more, specimens were obtained (among other things) of another new species of caddis-flyf. 

 In a swampy piece of ground where there were several small pools among fallen leaves of 

 Pandanus homei, were found various flies of the families Tipulidse, Chironomidse, 

 Culicidse and Psychodidse. At about 4 o'clock on the afternoon of January 26, on 

 coming up the bed of the stream in a gorge a little below the house, I found the place 

 swarming with countless specimens of yet another new caddis-fly, a very small species 

 (Petrotrichia palpalis Ulmer): they were running rapidly to and fro on the rocks, or 

 hidden in overhanging bushes, or fluttering over the water. In part of this valley, 

 too, there was a considerable display of the "fireflies" (Luciola sp.) on more than one 

 evening. 



* Not to be confounded with the similarly-named locality in the island of Silhouette. Tn several cases 

 the same place-name is used in more than one island, 

 t Hughscottiella auricapilla Ulmer. 



SECOND SERIES- ZOOLOGY, VOL. XIV. 5 



