354 MB. B. SPEUCE ON INSECT-MI&EATIONS IN SOUTH AMEEICA. 



geny ; and nearly all the very large flowers are apt to be plagued 

 by caterpillars, as well as by the grubs of flies and beetles*. 



Some caterpillars seem to have a decided taste for bitters ; and 

 narcotics are rarely objected to ; indeed I should say that most 

 insects are decidedly partial to them, while bees and wasps seem 

 to have a positive pleasure in getting drunk. The very few phyl- 

 lophagous beetles whose habits have come under my notice feed 

 on narcotic plants. At the falls of the Eio Negro, just south of 

 the equator, a common weed in the village of Sao Grabriel is Sola- 

 num jamaice7ise, Sw., growing (when not disturbed) to the size of 

 a currant-bush, and bearing large angular soft woolly leaves. In 

 February 1852, there appeared swarms of a large black beetle, 

 whose corpulent abdomen was barely half-covered by the elytra 

 (whence I suppose it au ally of our Meloes), and whose sole food 

 was this Solanum. Their feeding-times were the dusk of evening 

 and morning, when they would arise, as it were, out of the earth, 

 hover over the plants like a swarm of bees, and then settle down 

 in such numbers that the plants were black with them. From 

 one of the Solanuin-^\dii\t& I began to fill a bottle with beetles ; 

 but although I scared away twice as many as I captured, at the 

 end of ten minutes nothing was left of the leaves but the midribs. 

 A few beetles lingered on the Solanum all through the hot day, 

 scarcely feeding at all, and apparently narcotized. I believe our 

 own Oil-beetle eats the narcotic foliage of buttercups, but I know 

 not if it ever goes the length of getting tipsy on it. 



Before entering on the main object of this paper, which is to 

 record the facts of certain migrations that have fallen under my 

 notice — rather as problems to be solved by abler naturalists than , 

 myself, than with the pretension to offer any complete solution of 

 my own — I may digress so far as to say that when I reached the 

 Amazon in 1849, I considered myself fortunate in finding the zoo- 

 logical portion of the field already occupied by two such able 

 naturalists as Messrs. Bates and Wallace, thus leaving me free to 

 bestow my undivided attention on the botany. There are indis- 

 putable advantages in the concentration of one person's energies on 

 a single kingdom of Nature ; but in the consideration of many im- 

 portant general problems the disadvantages of this circumscribed 

 range of observation are manifest. I could not, for instance, devote 



* The above list has no further value than that of indicating, so far as my 

 notes and recollections serve me, the kinds of plants which I have seeen most 

 maltreated by caterpillars in the Amazon region. 



