Na t u ra l- His t o ry Collec I ors. 



6121 



O. Ilaliphron, ^oz6-., both sexes of which I took, and twice in copula; 

 the female something resembles O. Amphimedon, which is the 

 female of O. Helena. About the mud holes Hymenoptera were 

 abundant and on the fallen palm stems ; in dry gulleys, &c. were 

 many very curious Diptera ; Coleoptera, however, were not to be 

 found : I searched dead trees, and bark and leaves, with no other re- 

 ward than a ver}^ few species of minute Curculios and obscure Chryso- 

 melidae. After a few weeks of this work the mud holes got baked 

 hard, the pools of water disappeared one after another, and with them 

 the butterflies and other insects, and for some days 1 got almost nothing. 

 I now set to turning over the stones and dead leaves in the sandy 

 river-bed, and soon found that there were some minute Coleoptera 

 under them, namely, Anthici and very small Carabida3 ; to catch them 

 I made my boy bring a basin of water and a spoon, and by shovelling 

 in the sand I could pick off the insects which floated on the surface : 

 in this way I got many Carabidae, the largest not more than 1 J line ; 

 two or three species of Anthicus and some Steni and other Brach- 

 elytra. I now turned my attention to buffalo-dung, which, though 

 very barren compared with genuine British cow-dung, would 1 found 

 yield something to a persevering search, — 1 obtained Histers, Ontho- 

 phagi, and a considerable number of minute Staph^dinidae. A 

 few days, however, soon exhausted this collecting-ground, for, except 

 in the river-bed, the dung was absolutely uninhabited, when chance 

 showed me a new and very rich beetle station. My lad brought me 

 one day a fine large Nitidula which he had found in an over-ripe 

 jack fruit (Artocarpus sp.) ; this set me to searching these fruits, of 

 which there were a number about in various stages of decay, and I 

 soon found that I had made a discovery, — Staphylinidae, large 

 and small, Nitidulae, Histers, Outhophagi, actually swarmed on them : 

 every morning, for some weeks, I searched these rotten fruits, and 

 always with more or less success ; I placed ripe ones on the fruit 

 here and there, which I visited once a day, and from some of them got 

 even Carabidae; in all I found not much short of one hundred species 

 of Coleoptera on the fruit, including most that I had before found in 

 dung, so that it seems probable that, in tropical countries, the largo 

 fleshy fruits in a state of decay and putrescence are the true stations of 

 manj^ of the Carpophagous and Necrophagous Coleoptera, a fact of 

 some importance, as explaining the presence of Outhophagi, &c. 

 in places where there are no ruminating animals : at length the rains 

 began to fall almost every evening, and the fruits, soaked with water, 

 ceased to be productive, but I was compensated by discovering that 

 XVI. 2 M 



