6122 



Natural'IIistory Collectors. 



the margins of tlie streams, wliich when dry were so rich in 

 Lepidoptera, were now an excellent collecting-ground for small Co- 

 leoptera ; mider the moist dead leaves that lay on the rocks I found 

 numbers of small and very interesting Carabidse, with hosts of Anthici, 

 and a good many Pselaphidae and Hydrophili : with the rains 

 the butterflies almost disappeared, while the Cicindelidae came out in 

 great abundance, four species being different from those I took last 

 year ; small Melolonthida? also now became abundant on the foliage, 

 and I took two or three species new to me, with several pretty Chryso- 

 melas and Curculios. After a fortnight's close work at minute 

 Coleoptera, the weather became so wet and cloudy, as to admonish 

 my return to Macassar to pack my collections before the commence- 

 ment of the continuous heavy rains. 



To persons impressed with the idea of the prevalence of large 

 insects in the tropics, my Macassar collections will appear most ex- 

 traordinary ; the average size is certainly less than that of our British 

 species, and the colours not at all more brilliant. Of the Carabidae 

 (more than one hundred species), the greater part are under 4 lines 

 and a very large number under 2 lines, whilst several under 1 line 

 are perhaps the smallest of the family : the Brachelytra (eighty or 

 ninety species) are, with the exception of about a dozen, very minute 

 and obscure: the Rhynchophora are all small, and there are about 

 one hundred species of minute Necrophaga, Xylophaga, &c., and 

 about eighteen species of the elegant little Anthici, whilst the Longi- 

 cornes, Buprestidae and Cetoniae, usually so abundant, are very scarce : 

 if we were to take away some dozen purely tropical forms, the 

 collection would have all the appearance of one from an extrati opical 

 and even northern locality, owing to the large proportion of Carabidae, 

 Staphylinidae and Necrophaga, the small average size of the species 

 and the obscurity of their colours. 



Amboyna, where I am staying a month only, on my way to Ternate, 

 offers a striking contrast to the country I have just quitted: it is emi- 

 nently tropical ; the number of large and handsome species in all 

 orders of insects is perhaps greater than in any other place I 

 have visited, and the forms far more closely resemble those of Aru 

 than of Borneo or Macassar; a number of the common species of the 

 surrounding island are represented at Amboyna by others very closely 

 allied or by varieties, but in almost every instance they are of larger 

 size and more brilliant colours, — Papilio Severus and Ulysses are 

 larger here than at Aru, whilst Deiphobus is larger than the closely 

 allied Memnon of the Sanda Island or Ascalaphus of Macassar. In 



