Natural-History Collectors. 5015 



Veg. Kingd.) ; the other is a beautiful silky fibre of a species of Mal- 

 vaceae, which I think might be made a branch of commerce. 



" There is no doubt whatever that the country from Ega to 

 Moyobamba is the richest country in America, in beauty and variety 

 of all departments of Natural History, and the least known, be- 

 cause difficult of access, and beset with the greatest difficulties (as 

 scarcity of food, poverty and savagenessof the Indians, and incessant 

 plague of mosquitos, &c.) To-day a French gentleman passed this 

 village on the road from Moyobamba to Para; he is an amateur geogra- 

 pher (M. Emile Carrey) ; he brought a few hundreds of Nymphalidae 

 (in papers), collected in four or five excursions, around Moyobamba : 

 he tells me that the residents there said they never had an entomolo- 

 gist there. Imagine the treat I had to examine the whole of the spe- 

 cimens ; they showed me that Moyobamba is indeed a totally new 

 place with respect to Nymphalidae : there were some fifteen species 

 of Catagramma alone. M. Carrey was surprised to be shown the dif- 

 ference in the species ; he thought they were all the same ! This fact, 

 together with another, namely, that he could not find any insects at 

 Ega, shows what I could do by a little close investigation. Besides 

 the Catagramma, I noted two Papilio Zagreus and a new Megas- 

 tanis(?), in all about twenty-five species of the loveliest Nymphalidae, 

 new to me : three-fourths of the collection of course were common 

 Callidryas, Agraulis, &c." 



"April 30th, 1855. 



" The small collection now sent contains a few very choice things 

 I believe. In Coleoptera, there are two species of Ctenostoma and a 

 new Megacephala (very similar to M. curta, Reiche, but smaller, more 

 parallel in shape, &c, and found in company with Spixii, at Villa 

 Nova, in the earth : M. curta is found under stones close to water, 

 and is common at Santarem, where the new species does not exist) : 

 there are many species of Coleoptera which I never sent before. In 

 Lepidoptera, there is a new Eue'ides ; the two or three Catagrammae 

 and one or two others please note as Moyobamba insects, from a few 

 given me by M. Emile Carrey. There are about twenty specimens 

 of the new insect Gnostus formicicola, Westw. : it is found, strange 

 enough, only in one little corner on the edge of the woods, in the gal- 

 leries only of one small species of ant. Since Sunday last I have ex- 

 amined every hollow twig and branch in the neighbourhood and got 

 only twenty-two specimens; four I keep with me, I send you nineteen, 

 including one old specimen I had kept over from last year. The 

 same dry twigs contain quite as many habitations of other ants, 



