* 
264 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
swift, making it almost impossible to capture. I then stood still 
for some time watching them, and noticed that every time they 
came to a palm tree they circled round and round the stem, 
mounting all the while, till an altitude of some fifteen or twenty 
feet was reached, and then reversing the action almost to the 
ground, when they would start off again on their mad flight until 
another palm tree appeared in the course, and then the same 
thing happened. By standing at the foot of a tree in a main line 
of flight I caught a number without any difficulty, though pre- 
viously I had been unable to catch any. 
We had a delightful visit to Kandy, the difference in elevation 
making a most noticeable change in the fauna. Kandy is a fine 
centre for collecting, the walks in the immediate neighbourhood 
are good, Lady Horton’s Walk in particular being productive of 
fine ‘‘stick-insects”’ and ‘‘ mantids,” including the curious cobra- 
mantis. I visited this walk with a lantern one evening, and 
caught a number of moths, and was much struck by the number 
of flying phosphorescent insects which presented a most curious 
spectacle among the trees. On another occasion we went to a 
place called Haragama, about nine miles from Kandy, and 
situated near a fine river, a locality which is always good for 
insects, and on this river-bed we had very good reason to con- 
sratulate ourselves. Several large Sphingid moths (Acherontia 
lachesis) were poked out of the crevices of a gigantic banyan 
tree, and some magnificent Buprestid beetles were sunning them- 
selves on another tree. Several species of larve were collected, 
including those of Doleschallia basaltide, one of the “leaf” 
butterflies, and T'alicada nyseus, a very pretty little Lycenid 
butterfly, abundant round Kandy. The larva of this butterfly 
constructs quite a cocoon for its pupa. 
From Kandy we all returned to Colombo to join the ‘ Val- 
halla’ for a trip to Trincomalee. This place is indeed a 
naturalist’s paradise, having, as it has, good collecting ground 
up to the water’s edge. I noticed two things in particular at 
Trincomalee—one was the much smaller number of individual 
butterflies, though there was no apparent diminution in point of 
species; the other was the extreme abundance of Menelaides 
hector as compared with the western side of the island, where 
Lertias romulus was much the commoner insect, though I only 
