110 Mr. P. H. Gosse on I Ik- htsecls of Jamaica. 



I had left England with high expectations of the richness of 

 tlie West Indian entomology : large and gaily-coloured beetles, 

 1 supposed, would be crawling on almost every shrub, gorgeous 

 butterHies be filling the air, moths be swarming about the 

 forest-edges at night, and caterpillars be beaten from every bush. 

 These expectations were far from being realized ; a few species of 

 butterflies, chiefly Pieris, Callidryns, Terias, Heliconia Charitonia, 

 Argymiis Passijlorce, and A. Delila, Cystineura Mardania, and one 

 or two Nyrnphalid(B and L/yccmadce, are indeed common enough 

 at all times, and in almost all situations ; others are abundant 

 at a particular season or locality ; but in general butterflies are to 

 be obtained only casually. Moths are still more rare : I had pro- 

 vided myself with bull^s-eye lanterns, and repeatedly took them out 

 after nightfall, carefully searching the banks and hedges by the 

 sides of roads, the margins of woods, &c., but never, in this way, 

 took a single specimen. At some seasons, however, as Decem- 

 ber, and more particularly June, on rainy nights, hundreds of 

 little NoctuadcB, Pyralidae, Geometrada, Tineadce, &c. fly in at 

 the open windows, and speckle the ceiling, or flutter around the 

 glass-shades with which the candles are protected from the 

 draughts. A good many small beetles, and other things, also 

 fly in on such occasions, and several interesting species I have 

 taken in this way which I never saw at any other time. But in 

 general beetles and the other orders are extremely scarce, and 

 especially Diptera ; I have often been astonished at the paucity 

 of these, as compared with their abundance in Canada, the 

 Southern United States, and other localities (in which I have 

 collected) during the hot weather. One may often walk a mile, — 

 I do not mean in the depth of the forest, but in situations com- 

 paratively open, beneath an unclouded sun, — and not see more 

 than a dozen specimens of all orders. Nor is the beating of 

 bushes productive of insects and their larvse, as I have fomid 

 it in North America. In Canada I have shaken ofi" perhaps 

 twenty species of lepidopterous larvse in the course of an hour 

 or two on an autumnal morning ; but I think I have seen scarcely 

 more than half that number of caterpillars in Jamaica during a 

 year and a halFs collecting. 



To this scarcity of insects however there are two or three local 

 and seasonal exceptions. And this leads me to speak of the prin- 

 cipal localities where I have collected my specimens, and to give a 

 brief description of them, which yet will be but supei-fieial, ow ing 

 to my ignorance of botany and geology. 



Bluefields. — I begin with this place, because it was the 

 centre of my operations, and my stated residence during my 

 whole sojourn in the island. Bluefields was once a sugar-estate, 

 situated on a gentle slope, about a quarter of a mile from the 



