296 ' Transactions . — Zoology. 



some mjsterions reason, however, the "zoology" was never regularly published, 

 and I believe that a single copy never found its way to this province. At any 

 rate, I have made repeated inquiries and could never ascertain the existence of 

 one here, though there may be some in the other provinces. Considering that 

 this costly work was published at the imperial expense, with the intention of 

 diffusing as widely as possible the information acquired during the voyage, it 

 must betoken either great stinginess on the part of scientific authorities at 

 home or great apathy on the part of those here, that we should have remained 

 for so many years without a copy of it. Of course, a great many additional 

 New Zealand species of Coleoptera have been described since 1846, but to give 

 you some idea of the difiS.culty of tracing them, I may mention that some of 

 our beetles have found their way into the hands of a Russian entomologist and 

 that, owing to the unfortunate disuse of Latin, and the mania for " modern 

 languages " which are now so fashionable, he has actually described them in 

 Russian ! Well might the president of the Entomological Society of London 

 remark, in one of his recent addresses, " that if the practice of recording 

 scientific information exclusively in the vernacular be persisted in, the thorough 

 investigation of any family of insects, already extremely difiicult, will soon 

 become totally impossible." Books alone, however, are not all that the 

 working student requires, and having been long convinced of the necessity of 

 procuring for the province bucli a typical collection as I liave alluded to, I 

 some years ago endeavoured to supply one for this purpose. 



I took with me when returning to England as good a collection of our 

 insects as somewhat adverse circumstances had enabled me to get together. 

 I intended to have had these properly named and classified in London, to 

 have compared them with the types in the Biitish Museum, and to have 

 then sent them back to the colony. Unfortunately, this small collection 

 was lost when the " Blue Jacket " was burnt, and all my efforts to replace 

 it, by inducing my New Zealand friends to forward me specimens whilst in 

 England, proved, with one exception, quite unavailing. Thus, although I was 

 ready to devote a considerable portion of my time, and to incur not a little 

 trouble and expense in order to provide a working collection of insects for our 

 museum, I was unable to do anything for want of the necessary material, and 

 was compelled to return to New Zealand almost as ignorant of its descriptive 

 entomology as I left it. Labouring under such great disadvantages, I should 

 not venture to lay the following remarks before you, had I not observed since 

 my return a lamentable dearth of original papers in our Society ; and had I 

 not also noticed that a meagre and imperfect paper often has the effect of 

 eliciting valuable information from those who possess it. 



The poverty of the New Zealand fauna is well known, and the order 

 Coleoptera affords but few exceptions to the general rule. Our beetles are 



