THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 35 



Adventure frigate when fifty miles off the coast of South America- 

 A southerly wind brought flies in myriads to Admiral Smyth's 

 ship in the Mediterranean when he was ioo miles distant from 

 the coast of Africa. A large Indian buprestid beetle ( Chysochroa 

 ocellata) was quite recently caught alive in the Bay of Bengal by 

 Captain Payne, of the barque William Maiison, 273 miles from 

 the nearest land. Darwin caught a locust 370 miles from land ; 

 and in 1844 swarms of locusts several miles in extent, and as 

 thick as the flakes in a heavy snow-storm, visited Madeira. These 

 must have come with perfect safety more than 300 miles ; and as 

 they continued flying over the island for a long time, they could 

 evidently have travelled for a much greater distance. Numbers of 

 living beetles, belonging to seven genera, some aquatic and some 

 terrestrial, were caught by Mr. Darwin, in the open sea, seventeen 

 miles from the coast of South America, and they did not seem 

 injured by the salt water. 



Almost all the accidental causes that lead to the dispersal of 

 the higher animals would be still more favourable for insects. 

 Floating trees could carry hundreds of insects for one bird or 

 mammal ; and so many of the larvse, eggs, and pupse of insects 

 have their abode in solid timber, that they might survive being 

 floated immense distances. Great numbers of tropical insects 

 have been captured in the London docks, where they have been 

 brought in foreign timber ; and some have emerged from furniture 

 after remaining torpid for many years. Most insects have the 

 power of existing weeks or months without food, and some are 

 very tenacious of life.* Many beetles will survive immersion for 

 hours in strong spirit ; and water a few degrees below the boiling 

 point will not always kill them. We can easily understand, 

 therefore, how in the course of ages insects may become dispersed 

 by means which would be quite inadequate in the case of the 

 higher animals. The driftwood and tropical fruits that reach 

 Ireland and the Orkneys, the double cocoanuts that cross the 

 Indian Ocean from the Seychelle Islands to the coast of Sumatra, 

 the winds that carry volcanic dust and ashes for thousands of 

 miles, the hurricanes that travel in their revolving course over wide 

 oceans, all indicate means by which a few insects may at rare 

 intervals be carried to remote regions. 



In reading the above remarks, we are at once struck with their 

 applicability in the case of many of the insects of our own colony, 

 and who amongst our field workers have been to Brighton Beach 

 and elsewhere along the shores of Port Phillip and have not 

 observed hundreds of beetles and other insects lying strewed on 

 the sands at about high-water mark? Buprestida;, Longicorns, 

 Elateridae, Lucanidae (with scarcely any limit to other orders, as 



* I read a paper on this subject before the Microscopical Society .of 

 Victoria some years since. — C.F . 



