A FLYING VISIT TO DIRK HARTOG, ETC. 299 



Vieill., these latter being remarkably tame, and allowing them- 

 selves to be approached within four or five yards. 



Lizards were fairly numerous, both in the open and under the 

 blocks of coralline limestone, but I did not see more than three 

 or four kinds. Of these, the most remarkable was a dark grey, 

 rather spiny species, sometimes nearly a foot in length, with an 

 exceedingly long tail (Amphibolurus barbatus). This was by no 

 means rare, and, although active enough, was so tame, or rather 

 so stupid, as to be caught without the slightest difficulty. A 

 little red-headed Lizard, which I had frequently seen on the 

 islands off the north-west coast of Australia, was, on the con- 

 trary, as nimble and wary as these creatures usually are, and I 

 could not succeed in securing a specimen. Under the stones I 

 found a very curious " Gecko," Phyllodactylus marmoratus, with 

 a thick carrot-shaped tail, suddenly constricted at the base. 

 The wind was too strong for insects to be moving freely, but I 

 found a good many small but interesting beetles, chiefly by 

 searching in the sand at the roots of the bent-grass. Numbers 

 of land-shells, all of minute size and mostly dead, were strewn 

 about in hollows among the sand-hills; they principally consisted 

 of several species of Pupa (three of which, P. contraria, Sm., 

 P. wallabyensis, Sm., and P. mooreana, Sm., were undescribed), 

 with a little Truncatella found abundantly near the shore, where 

 it was accompanied by many weathered shells of the well-known 

 and widely distributed Spirula australis. 



The wind had gone down somewhat on the next day (17th), 

 but not sufficiently so as to induce us to leave our anchorage ; 

 and a party of five officers, including myself, left the ship after an 

 early breakfast to spend a day on the island. We hauled our 

 boat up on a sandy beach, on which I found numerous specimens 

 of a pretty little weevil of the family Cossonidce under the heaps 

 of Zostera ; and then each went his own way, my messmates to 

 shoot, and I to look for insects, or anything else that might turn 

 up. By keeping under the lee of the high sandy banks next the 

 sea, where the sun was hot and the breeze was not so much felt 

 as elsewhere, I soon found some butterflies on the wing. These 

 were of two species only — a little "blue" (Lyccena sp.), and a 

 very pretty little " skipper," in appearance recalling our British 

 Cyclopides paniscus on the upper side, and handsomely marked 



