5914 



Visit to the Diggings 



down to Melbourne, where a beautiful female made its appearance, 

 and to this Mr. Newman has since given the name of Pelora Oxleyi. 

 It is wonderful how so large a moth could be contained in so small a 

 cocoon. Another Bombyx, Entomela obliqua, is a sacktrager; I 

 have often found the larvae carrying a most beautiful case, composed 

 of the twigs of Eucalyptus, but have been unsuccessful in all my 

 attempts to breed a perfect imago. 



As I am now bringing my memoranda to a close, I will just state 

 that on my return I placed my collection in the hands of Mr. New- 

 man, who felt so much interested that he selected and described 

 thirty novel or unique Lepidoptera in his usual lucid and erudite 

 style. The paper is published in the * Transactions of the Entomolo- 

 gical Society of London,' and is accompanied by figures, beautifully 

 coloured, by my esteemed friend Joseph Standish. The first species 

 described by Mr. Newman, Zeuzera Duponchellii, I found in January, 

 1854, at rest on one of the wooden legs of my windlass ; I borrowed 

 a large pin, and at night managed to convey him to my tent. Chei- 

 mabacche Cinderella I took at Barker's Creek, in November. Of 

 Tortricopsis Rosabella I saw four or five : this insect is particularly 

 interesting as belonging to a group, not uncommon in Australia, 

 which seems exactly intermediate between the Tortricidae and Ti- 

 neidae. Many of the insects described in Mr. Newman's paper were 

 unique or extremely rare, but I could not avoid a feeling of great dis- 

 appointment when that gentleman returned the collection to me with 

 all the Geometrae, which were the gems and my especial favourites, 

 unnoticed and unnamed. On my asking Mr. Newman why he had 

 left the best and most beautiful insects unnamed, he immediately 

 replied, " M. Guenee is now engaged in describing the Geometridae 

 of the whole world, and I will leave to him the undivided honour of 

 naming these lovely insects." 



In February, 1854, that success which had previously eluded me 

 in the gold field began to set in, and Entomology again fell into 

 abeyance ; still I never left the tent without my pill-boxes, and rarely 

 returned without some addition to my collection. After a while 

 fortune again forsook me, and my assistants became incorrigibly 

 drunken ; so, having secured a few pounds of the hard yellow earth, I 

 turned my face homeward. I sailed from Melbourne on the 24th 

 of July, 1854. My last entomological doing was the finding of 

 several cocoons of Pelora Oxleyi at Brunswick, near Melbourne. 

 Several Saturnias which I had in cocoon emerged when we were off 



