Iliiiigivorth — Early references to Hazvaiian entomology 15 



120, 124) and Waterhouse (87), part of the Coleoptera; while Smith (86) 

 and Cameron (97, 109, 125, 127) helped with the Hymenoptera. 



In 1882 J. E. Chamberlin published an interesting paper dealing- with 

 the devastating hordes of cutworms, or army worms, on Oahu (104). 

 The outbreak of this pest is said to have extended from the sandy beach 

 to the mountains. The land over which the worms had fed appeared 

 bare, as if scorched; cattle starved to death. Blackburn identified the 

 species as Prodenia ingloria Walker, a cutworm known in Australia ; yet 

 all evidence goes to show that this pest was an old resident in Hawaii. I 

 was particularly interested in the following statement by Chamberlin: 

 "Whenever a tract is burned, a great flight of moths appeared immediately ; 

 and an army of worms shortly followed, entirely destroying the tender 

 grass." This was exactly my experience with a similar species in North 

 Queensland. Whenever an accidental fire ran through the growing cane, 

 a scurge of cutworms soon followed to wipe out the crop just as it was 

 beginning to recover from the burn. The only explanation that I was able 

 to oflFer was that those abnormal conditions in some way upset the natural 

 controlling factors so that the development of the pest, for a time, was 

 not hindered by them. 



The investigations of the Challenger Expedition were primarily marine. 

 Small attention apparently was given to land fauna and few references 

 to insects appear in the published works. Kirby, in describing the Hy- 

 menoptera collected, mentioned only three from Hawaii. (This is the only 

 reference that I have been able to find.) But among the pelagic insects 

 belonging to the genus Halobates, monographed by White (114), are 

 several species found in Hawaiian waters. These were described and 

 figured in colored plates, making their determination easy. 



As a young graduate just out of the University of Oxford, the inde- 

 fatiguable worker, R. C. L. Perkins, came to the islands in 1892 ( ?). The 

 results of his work of more than twenty years stand as a monument to the 

 hardships that he endured and the efforts that he put forth. During these 

 years numerous papers were published, but the general results from the 

 study of the tremendous amount of material he collected appear in the 

 three large volumes of the Fauna Hawaiiensis. Of this work the follow- 

 ing parts were published previous to the year 190a: Macrolepidoptera by 

 E. Meyrick ; Hymenoptera Aculeata by R. C. L- Perkins ; Formcidae by 

 August Forel ; Orthoptera, Neuroptera and Coleoptera Rhynchophora, 

 Proterhinidae, Heteromera and Ciodae by R. C. L. Perkins ; and the 

 Coleoptera Phytophaga by David Sharp. Since the Fauna Hawaiiensis 

 is available in the principal libraries. I have not taken space to list the 

 numerous species described. 



