Natural' History Collectors. 



6121 



O. Haliphron, ^0^9., both sexes of which I toot, 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 very few species of minute Curculios and obscure Chryso- 

 melidae. After a few w^eets 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 I 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 Carabidse ; to catcli 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|- 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 I found 

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

 phagi, and a considerable number of minute Staphylinidae. 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, Onthophagi, 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 large 

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

 many of the Carpophagous and Necrophagous Coleoptera, a fact of 

 some importance, as explaining the presence of Onthophagi, &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 



