EIGHT MONTHS' COLLECTING IN THE SEYCHELLES ISLANDS, 1908—1909 37 



the owners, the Messieurs Choppy, time permitted of a stay only of one night (Dec. 2 3). 



In Felicite" I was enabled to spend four days (Dec. 14 — 18), through the kindness of 

 Mr H. a'C. Bergne. Both these islands are largely given up to the cultivation of coconuts, 

 but considerable areas remain covered with wild forest, of a type of which hitherto I had 

 had little or no experience. Conspicuous among the trees, some of which are of great 

 size, are the "badamier" (Terminalia Catappa), the takamaka (Calophyllum Inophyllum), 

 the " bois de natte " (Imbricaria seychdlarum), and several kinds of Ficus. Some of the 

 species (e.g. the Imbricaria) are peculiar, but there are many which (unlike those of the 

 endemic mountain-jungles in Mahe, etc.) range beyond the confines of the Seychelles. 

 Moreover these forests are very dry compared with the humid mountain-jungles, and their 

 insect-fauna appeared to be relatively scanty. Mosquitoes (Stegornyia) were abundant 

 and persistent ; and a number of insects of various other kinds were captured. Several 

 species of moths not met with before were found in Felicitd. They were taken in one 

 particular spot, where, at the foot of a precipitous rock and in its crevices, lay piles of 

 fallen Pandanus leaves among which the creatures hid. On the whole, the quota of 

 material yielded by these two islands is by no means unimportant, including as it does 

 several forms which I did not obtain elsewhere. These may possibly prove not to be 

 peculiar to the archipelago, but to belong to that wider-ranging fauna which is established 

 round the coasts of the Seychelles, and to which allusion has already been made. 



The last few days (March 3 — 10) of my stay were passed in Port Victoria, and I left 

 the Seychelles for England early on March 11, 1909. 



V. CONCLUSION. 



At this early stage, while most of the material is still only being prepared and sorted, 

 it is not possible with any reliability to draw from it conclusions as to the general nature of 

 the insect-fauna of the Seychelles. That many new forms are contained in the collection 

 is, however, quite certain. Those groups which have already been cursorily examined, 

 or worked out, by specialists, show a considerable proportion of new species and in some 

 cases of new genera. There are some groups, such as the Trichoptera, of which no species 

 had previously been described or recorded from the archipelago. Of some other divisions, 

 such as the Diptera and small parasitic Hymenoptera, extremely few have hitherto been 

 obtained from the Seychelles : during the expedition which is the subject of this paper, 

 large numbers of specimens of these groups were obtained, including many forms new to 

 the islands, and to science. In the case of certain other orders (Orthoptera, Coleoptera) a 

 considerable number of species had already been collected by the well-known French 

 entomologist Monsieur Charles Alluaud, who visited the islands in 1892, and from the 

 results of whose expedition knowledge of the entomology of the Seychelles has been chiefly 

 drawn : but even in these cases, owing to the much longer time spent by me in the islands 

 and the great facilities for reaching the best collecting-grounds, there will doubtless be 

 large additions to the list of the Seychelles fauna. 



