INSECTS. 355 



Mid the southern parts of Africa in general present us with 

 Sagroy Diopsis, and Pausstis, although it may be observed 

 that some of these also occur in the East Indies. The last- 

 named genus is remarkable for the very peculiar form of the 

 antennae. The genus does not exist in the twelfth edition 

 of the Systema Nattircz, but was published by Linnaeus in 

 a separate dissertation in 1775. Only a single species was 

 known at that period, and another was added in 1796, by 

 Dr. Adam Afzelius, then residing at Sierra Leone.* The 

 etymology of the name is supposed by AfzeUus to be from 

 the Greek n-aucus, signifying a pause> cessation, or rest ; for 

 Linnaeus, now old and infirm, and sinking under the weight 

 of age and labour, saw no probability of continuing any 

 longer his career of glory. " He might, therefore," adds 

 Dr. Shaw, " be supposed to say ' hie meta laborum,' as it in 

 reality proved, at least with regard to insects, — pausus being 

 the last he ever described."t It was literally, in the lan- 

 guage of Young, — 



"An awful pause prophetic of his end !" 



Both Madagascar and St. Helena present a few insects 

 which to a certain extent demonstrate the African com- 

 plexion of those islands ; but the latter especially is also 

 allied by its entomological features to some of the south- 

 western countries of Asia. According to Latreille, Africa 

 furnishes no species of the genus Passalus, although it is 

 elsewhere widely distributed over America and the East 

 Indies. The genera Graphyptera, Eurichora^ and Pneumora 

 are probably peculiar to Africa. 



Among the hemipterous insects of Africa we may men- 

 tion the Mantis precaria, an object of superstitious venera- 

 tion among the Hottentots, who hold in the highest respect 

 the person on whom the insect happens to alight. 



" I here became acquainted," says Mr. Burchell, in his 

 Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa, " with a new 

 species of Mantis, whose presence became afterward suffi- 

 ciently familiar to me, by its never failing, on calm warm 

 evenings, to pay me a visit as I was writing my journal, 

 and sometimes to interrupt my lucubrations by putting out 



♦ Linn. Trans., vol. iv. t General Zoology, vol. vi. p. 43 



