1582 The Zoologist— March, 1869. 



Resinous Sap attractive to Insects.— I think 1 never mentioned to 

 you one of the interesting sights that we always took care lo inspect 

 whenever we ascended the aqueduct road lioni Botofogo. There was 

 near the roadside a large tree standing by itself in the sunshine ; 

 towards the top of it a branch had been torn off by the wind, and the 

 wound gave forth a stream of dark resinous sap, which ran nearly down 

 to the ground : this resinous sap was a very favourite haunt of Lepi- 

 doptera and Coleoptera, and indeed of all orders. The butterflies were 

 the most showy visitors, of course ; they were not the smaller weakly 

 winged species that haunt the footpath, but magnificent fellows, with 

 wings almost as strong as a bird's, that swept down from the heights 

 above, and condescended to approach the earth only to visit some 

 hospitable tree like this, which is keeping open house to all the insect 

 world. Of the beetles, the most prominent were splendid fellows of 

 the longicorn genera Trachyderes, Lissonotus, &c., very common, but 

 very handsome; besides these were dangerous looking giants of Ich- 

 neumons and smaller Diptera, &c., without end : but, alas ! though the 

 visitors to the tree were so abundant, they were unavailable for us; the 

 sap was unfortunately in the blazing sunshine, and this made every 

 creature so alert (and withal many were so high up the trunk) that we 

 soon found that to capture them was hopeless. But I always made a 

 point of visiting the tree : by creeping up slowly and keeping as much 

 in shade as possible I could watch the revellers without causing much 

 alarm ; the tree was manifestly a well-known luncheon-room for all 

 insects whose morning duties led them into that part of the forest; 

 they kept coming in from all quarters and going away in all directions ; 

 the big butterflies were fussy and unneighbourly, running up and down 

 in the sunshine and disturbing all around them ; the beetles, though 

 lively enough on occasion, were more demure, and sedulously attended 

 to the main object of their visit. I wonder what all those creatures 

 think of each other; they do not gossip, like ants, but they make way 

 for each other, and the manifestation of alarm by one is at once 

 accepted by all in his neighbourhood. The Ichneumons are un- 

 popular among the insect tribes ; everybody gives one of them a wide 

 berth, and interchange of civilities, as between butterflies, are of the 

 curtest: one big blacker steel-coloured gentleman is so obnoxious 

 that as soon as he alights everyone in that neighbourhood departs. 

 What a vast deal there is for us to learn ! these creatures, I suppose, 

 have their traditions, and if not traditions (by these I mean, of course, 

 the natural tendencies that they derive from their parents), their own 



