304 News of Naturalists. 



as opportunities offered. With regard to Mr. Macleay 

 himself, it is his intention to remain four or five years in 

 New South Wales, where he thinks he will have occasion to 

 publish some of the results of his investigations without 

 waiting for the remote prospect of his return to England. 

 He had made one journey to the Hunter river ; there are 

 bones, he observes, in limestone caves of Wellington valley, 

 which prove to be those of gigantic marsupials, now extinct ; 

 but with the exception of these, few fossils have been found 

 in New South Wales. The impressions of a fern and of a 

 fish, some corallines, molluscous shells, and a few radiata, 

 are all that he has yet seen or heard of. No Crustacea or 

 annulosa or cirrepedous shells have yet been found, nor 

 reptiles or birds. Indeed, he observes, this new country is 

 in reality a very old one, if we may judge from the low 

 organization of its fossil remains. 



Mr. Macleay asks many questions regarding India, 

 which perhaps we will do better by publishing, than by at- 

 tempting to answer ourselves. He is particularly interested 

 in those fossil remains which, as he himself expresses it, "fill 

 up gaps in the chain of living nature," and asks if we have 

 any Trilobites. They occur, he says, at the Cape of Good 

 Hope, and might be expected in silurian rocks. He is desi- 

 rous of being informed if leeches abound in the dark damp 

 forests of India, and also if there be any insects parasitical 

 in ants' nests, and whether bees and wasps are infested 

 with parasites in India. He is desirous of having some of 

 the Hymenopterous and Dipterous insects of India, with 

 all the parasitical kinds, and the names of the animals 

 they infest. We had sent a small collection of the com- 

 moner insects collected in the cold season, but Mr. Macleay 

 is now desirous of having some of those which are found on 

 plants of various kinds during the rains; and in making 

 collections during winter, he recommends stones to be 

 turned, and the bark of trees to be removed in search of the 

 rarer sorts. Calcutta is. not the most favourable place for 



