Notes on a Visit to Fernando Noronha. 435 



the first mentioned small bird, one being unfinished; the 

 other contained at least one egg, white, with purple spots. 

 It was so placed, however, as only to be secured by cutting 

 down the branch that held it, so that the egg, or eggs, were 

 broken by the fall. It was well built of dried grass and the 

 pappi of Convolvulus, lined with a few sea-bird's feathers. 

 There was a nest of the sylvia on a branch of the Mulungu 

 tree from which we got the flowers, but we were unable to 

 secure it. We got a good series of the skins of all these 

 birds. A few waders frequented the shores, one like a 

 curlew, another brown and white bearing some resemblance 

 to a plover, and the third looked like a sandpiper. They 

 were all so shy that it was found impossible to secure any 

 specimens. Evidently they are not endemic, as their number 

 is too small to maintain the species. Sea birds were abun- 

 dant, including frigate and tropic birds, noddies — one, white 

 in colour, called here " Viuva Branca," or " the white widow " 

 — boobies, and one or two other less common forms. The 

 reptiles are, first, an endemic skunk, Euprepes punctatus, 

 brown in colour with spots of a brighter tint, with a fine 

 iridescence on its scales. Large specimens are quite ten 

 inches long. A gecko is abundant in the houses and on 

 banana stems ; and a small Amphishmna is very frequently 

 found under stones. Insect life is exceedingly poor. There 

 are large numbers of immense yellow-bodied dragon-flies, and 

 a few with red bodies. All the streams and pools are full of 

 their larvse. The black cricket of the island is in thousands 

 in the fields, chirping on every side ; it is not a mole cricket 

 as has been stated in several of the accounts of Fernando 

 Noronha. Two species of green locusts are very abundant, 

 and we got a grey one, of great size, in the woods ; a yellow- 

 legged grasshopper swarmed in the herbage, but was difficult 

 to catch. A very fine red bug was seen running about in the 

 thickets. Beetles are few, small, and dull in colour ; but one 

 Scarabceus, found in the woods to the west, was large. But we 

 appeared to have arrived at the wrong season, as we only 

 found fragments of the adult insect. One day, however, I 

 succeeded in finding a few larvae under some stones — huge 

 white grubs, like great cockchafer larvse. We saw enormoug 



