302 H. B. GUPPY, M.B., 
cause of the absence of our Honorary Secretary, Captain Petrie, is 
that heis very dangerously ill. 
Dr. Curupert CoLtiinewoop referred to a visit he had made to 
the uninhabited Pratas Coral Atoll where he had observed two 
influences at work, the destructive influence of the crabs and the 
carrying agency of the birds. When onasmall island off the coast 
of Borneo, he had observed the hermit crab to live almost entirely on 
the tender parts of the Mango, and in the Keeling Islands, where they 
abounded, he could well understand their not permitting any tender 
shoot, of the cocoa-nut tree, for instance, tosurvive. Asregards the 
producing force he was surprised to find sea birds considered to be 
carrying agents for seeds, as they usually fed on fish; on the 
islands he had alluded to as having visited, the birds were 
numerous and very tame, although they would not permit one to 
approach them, always vomiting their food (apparently fish), 
and flying away when anyone did. On_ shooting frigate 
birds he had always found fish in their stomach. He did not mean 
to contravert the statements of the author and could only suppose 
that in the absence of fish the birds might sometimes feed on seeds. 
Rev. F. A. Wankur, D.D., F.L.S., remarked that in one part of 
the paper the author said ‘New insects have been introduced 
accidentally or intentionally during the last half century,” and 
asked what insects had been found and what was the fauna 
known to exist in the Keeling Islands, 50 years ago, and 
whether the fact of new insects having been introduced pointed to 
efforts at acclimatisation by any of the present residents in the 
Keeling Atoll. As the Solomon Islands had been mentioned in 
the paper he might add that it was worth while to notice that it 
was curious to find there not only a new species of bird 
wing (ornithoptera) but also the species known as the swallow- 
tail. Nearly every island of the Malay archipelago had a species 
of bird-wing butterfly peculiar to itself, and the Malay 
group of islands was the only one in the world containing many 
large and handsome species of butterflies that had not been found 
on the adjacent continent also. 
The AurHor.—My other duties have prevented my paying much 
attention to insects, but Mr. Forbes was on the islands in 1878, 
end made a collection, which, however, he unfortunately lost in 
Java, through the upsetting of a boat, but he has published his. 
