219 
On the Lepidoptera of St. Helena. 
Scales in nineteen rows, smooth. Ventrals 261. Anal 
bifid ; the twenty-three anterior subcaudals are simple, and 
followed by about eighty paired ones. 
Upper parts reddish brown, irregularly mottled with darker. 
Lower parts yellowish, finely mottled with blackish. 
The single specimen is 31 inches long, of which the tail 
takes 7 inches. 
XXVII.— Notes on the Lepidoptera of St. Helena , with 
Descriptions of new Species. By Mrs. T. Vernon Wol¬ 
laston. 
Although it is generally admitted that islands are, without 
doubt, for the most part, more unproductive (even in propor¬ 
tion) than continents, and that the smaller the area the less 
favourable will it be for the development of insect life, yet, 
perhaps, this very fact imparts to these restricted faunas a 
greater degree of interest than they would otherwise possess. 
Especially is this the case in St. Helena (more so even than 
in the other Atlantic islands which have been most carefully 
searched), not only from the fact of its greater remoteness 
from other land, which attaches to it an importance which 
the student of zoological geography cannot fail at once to 
recognize, but likewise on account of its botany, which resem¬ 
bles no other in the peculiarity of its indigenous vegetation. 
And as there appear to be few facts in entomology more ex¬ 
tensively true than that the most peculiar insects of a region 
are usually found either to be dependent on or to inhabit the 
same area as its most peculiar plants, it may therefore, 
perhaps, be as well, before describing the Lepidoptera, just to 
take a brief glance at the general features of the flora of St. 
Helena. When first discovered, it is stated that the island 
was entirely covered with forests, the trees drooping over the 
tremendous precipices that overhang the sea. Now, however, 
it is sadly altered, and, with very few exceptions, it is only 
the loftiest and well-nigh inaccessible summits of the great 
central ridge that still retain the remains of the aboriginal 
vegetation. Near to the coast the rough lava is quite bare, 
and presents a most forbidding aspect to the stranger as he 
approaches it from the sea ; nor will he, if a naturalist, be 
much more satisfied as he rides into the interior through dis¬ 
tricts of the most unmistakably introduced vegetation. Sup¬ 
posing it to be in the summer time, the stranger will probably 
be struck (as we were) by the picturesque groups of u hay- 
