ZOOLOGICAL RAMBLES IN THE TRANSVAAL. 259 
unfortunately bore witness. I was very. anxious to secure these, 
and eventually did so, though I was compelled to purchase them 
from the Menagerie of Fillis’s Cireus—then performing in Pre- 
toria—to which they had become annexed. I brought a male and 
female of these birds safely home to England with me, with a 
collection of other living creatures—a collection, however, which 
had for family reasons; to be compulsorily broken up, after a 
Baboon had escaped from his cage and dismantled the drawing- 
room. Other living birds which I obtained from this district were 
the Black Goshawk (Melierax niger) and the Black-shouldered 
Kite (Hlanus ceruleus). 
Many of my visits to Pienaars River were of purely entomo- 
logical interest. The thick bush and old timber were features 
unknown to the high veld, and the distance of some sixty miles 
introduced the collector to an almost new insect fauna. In 
March, towards the end of the warm season, the butterfly genus 
Teracolus is well represented. In this month I toak, and not 
singly, 7’. subfasciatus, T’. eris, T. agoye, T. auxo, T. evenina, 
T’. achine, and T’. phlegetonia; all these may therefore be con- 
sidered as more or less forest or bush-haunting species. LBe- 
sides butterflies, I also secured many undescribed species: of 
moths, but these must be sought about November in the warm 
rainy period. In Coleoptera, as the wooded country would sug- 
gest, many Longicornia are to be obtained, and I was told by 
Mr. Thomsen, who collected there, that he procured some species 
by smartly tapping old trees with a stone near where the well- 
known borings were observed, when the beetles, — probably 
Prionid@, and very possibly Macrotoma palmata,—would come 
up sufficiently near to be seized cautiously and carefully by the 
antenne. I tried the experiment myself, unsuccessfully, but can 
implicitly rely on the authenticity of my informant. This device 
was quite new to me, and is I believe generally unrecorded. But 
searching for beetles under bark is a course likely to prove in- 
troductory to new acquaintances, as near this neighbourhood I 
once found beneath the bark of an old tree-stump, some three 
feet above the ground, a pair of the Ophidian Trimerorhinus 
triteniatus. ’ 
It may be mentioned, in conclusion, that in this wild spot 
my sojourn was made possible by the existence of a good hostelry 
8 2 
