ENTOMOLOGY. 95 



casually. Moths are still more rare : I had provided 

 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 in De- 

 cember, and more particularly June, on rainy nights, 

 hundreds of little Noctuadce, Pyralidce, Geometradce, 

 Tineada, See. 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 insects, 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 

 comparatively 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 larvae, as I have found it in North 

 America. In Canada I have shaken oiF perhaps 

 twenty species of lepidopterous larvae in the course 

 of an hour or two on an autumnal morning ; but I 

 think I have seen scarcely more than half that 

 number in Jamaica during a year and a half's col- 

 lecting. 



