Visit to the Diggings 



5005 



of Papilio, Polyommatus, and other Lepidoptera, but I had no means 

 of taking them ; and this, together with the want of pins and want of 

 time for setting them, caused an almost total cessation of collecting; 

 nevertheless I conthiued to observe. On the 11th of December I had 

 the good fortune to witness one of the most extraordinary flights of 

 butterflies that was perhaps ever seen ; they were all of one species, 

 Pieris Teutonia : from sunrise to sunset the atmosphere seemed lite- 

 rally filled with them ; before you, behind you, right and left, they 

 were passing by hundreds of thousands: they came from the south, 

 and flew directly against a northerly wind. I caught a few in my 

 hat, sufficient to ascertain the species. For two following days they 

 continued to pass in the same direction, although in diminished num- 

 bers each day. The rate at which these butterflies were flying was 

 about seven miles an hour, and the flight extended, as I was 

 afterwards told, many miles both to the right and left of Forest 

 Creek. 



From December to March I saw many insects, of all classes, that 

 were new to me, but having no pins (I had lost them in the Black 

 Forest) I collected but few. Had it not been for this misfortune I 

 might now have made a good collection of Micro-Lepidoptera. In 

 March I deemed it prudent to return to Melbourne to lay in a stock 

 of provisions for the winter. 



I left Melbourne on my return on the 1st of April, in company with 

 a shipmate who owned a horse and cart, and pitched my hut on Forest 

 Creek on the 6th. On this journey I captured several specimens of 

 a very richly marked insect, the Agarista Callisto : as we travelled 

 along these beautiful creatures would start up from the cart-ruts or 

 clods of damp earth. On camping each night we made a roaring fire 

 of cow-dung, and boiled our water for tea ; then sat by the fire, 

 smoking our pipes before turning in under the cart, where the ground 

 served us for a bed. Many insects sacrificed their lives in the fire, 

 and I captured while approaching several mutilated specimens of a 

 new beautiful and most remarkable Bombyx, which Mr. Newman has 

 since named Teara denticulata. On this journey we observed also 

 myriads of a small and unnamed lepidopterous insect, probably a 

 Crambus, which, on our lighting a candle under the cart, swarmed 

 into it in such numbers as actually to extinguish the light ; and many 

 a time have I found it absolutely necessary to clear away their dead 

 bodies from the wick with a lucifer match, or it would have been 

 quite impossible to keep the candle alight. Before we retired they 

 would fly by scores into the scalding tea, and as they floated lifeless 

 XVI. II 



