2G0 [.October, 



meis cardui (of course), and a little " Blue," allied to the European L. 

 Lysimon, which latter was not rare ; no beetles, though one of the 

 officers brought me a few carrion things {Dermesfes, Snprinus, and 

 Phaleria) which he had found under a dead bird on the main island, 

 Jebel Zebayir. We spent two or three days in sounding in the neigh- 

 bourhood of these islands, and resumed our course on the 2Bth, 

 arriving at Perim (in the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb) on the raoriiiug 

 of the 27th. 



This island was our head quarters until April 3rd, and during that 

 time I had a good many opportunities of landing, and managed to 

 enjo}^ myself very much, although the heat w^as intense (80° in the 

 shade every day, and never less than 80° at night), and the island is as* 

 barren and dreary a place as can well be imagined. It is of limited 

 size (about four miles by three), and of a somewhat horseshoe shape, 

 and generally level in character, the highest point being 214 feet above 

 the sea. The greater part of the island is strewn with great blocks of 

 black lava, very rough and unpleasant to walk over, but on the north 

 side is a tolerably esitensive sandy plain (in fact, an old raised coral 

 reef), covered with a scanty sprinkling of low green bushes of a species 

 of Zizyphus, and plants allied to SaJsola, Salicornia, &c., and on the 

 sandy beaches round the harbour a shrubby species of Armeria 

 flourishes. On the flowers of this plant I took (besides many Hy- 

 menoptera) several specimens of a very fine red and black MordeUa- 

 looking thing, and of a nice reddish GantJiaris with black head and 

 suture ; on the plain a very fine Adesmia occurred rarely, and several 

 species of Coleoptera, chiefly Heteromei-ous (Zophosis, Pedinus (?), 

 and others), were to be found sparingly under blocks of lava. Near 

 the landing place two species of Ocnera and of a nice genus allied to 

 Tentyria wore to be found not rarely, and a few Malacoderms, Anthicus 

 sp., &c., were to be obtained on flowers, but the most interesting 

 things were to be found by looking under the seaweed, &c., on the 

 beach of one of the branches of the harbour. Here I found (besides 

 Halohates in plenty, but mostly dead) such things as Phaleria, Tre- 

 chyscelis (?), a nice insect near Crypt icus, a very small testaceous-yellow 

 Dyschirius, Phytosus, Philorithus (nice sp.), Ptenidlum (swarms), an 

 excessively minute Acritus in plenty, &c., &c. Altogether I managed 

 to amass just forty species of beetles here, not bad for such a misera- 

 bly barren island ; of these no fewer than twenty belong to the 

 Heteromera. 



Among the Lepidoptera I took two of a wdiite butterfly, probably 

 a form of the widely distributed African Pieris hellica ; the little 



