Baiestoy>^ . Natural History Notes from South Africa. 135 



grant that it is difficult to get away from filthy lucre ; but if a nation 

 progresses, the ingredients of success are scribbled with a touch of 

 scientific warp, of artistic weft, and steeped in the dye of attraction, 

 when considering the Cape. Offer an interesting programme, and play 

 to a crowded house. Announce a sermon on Dry bones, and sing 



" 0 solitude, where are thy charms ?" 



We are behind the times, and Channing's inferences, " science has 

 now left her retreats, her shades, her selected company of votaries, 

 and with familiar tone begun the work of instructing the race" ranks in 

 the pages of history. I feel constrained to pen these words ; not all 

 I would, but all I dare. We are deficient in self-reliance and activity 

 in promoting and dispersing knowledge ; but brighter days, I trust, 

 are coming. Three years since I visited the Port Elizabeth Museum. 

 It reeked in filth ! Change and decay in all around I saw. Delapidated 

 specimens groaned dustily of cruel inattention. Those v."hich escaped 

 ruin might even then have constituted the nucleus of a good collection. 

 Now mark ! This museum is within the Town Hall, and the 

 jurisdiction, I think, of a club termed Atheuceum — whatever that 

 may signify; — more properly, "Amateur Theatrical." The key of 

 the door was kept under a dirty cocoa-nut mat. I paid another visit 

 just lately to the P.E. Museum, and if I say it was a disgrace to any 

 town, I speak mildly, most sober truth, and disregarding persiflage 

 or peevish utterances. Nothing succeeds like success. The " A.T." 

 club flourishes, and our museum makes a capital dressing-room for 

 would-be Hamlets, but it's rather hard on slighted donors of natural 

 history specimens. 



Legal technicalities are said to bar the way of renovation. More's 

 the pity on't. 



My next expeditions yielded many species of Bomhjcida, principally 

 Saturuidce, in their larval state, and some of them attain to enormous 

 dimensions, but appear, for the most part, as social or company grubs, 

 playing sad havoc amongst the leaves of their food-plants, I have not 

 found many of them to be silk producers, at which I am astonished ; 

 but there is an ugly fellow {Borocera postica) feeds on mimosa that 

 weaves a cocoon and distributes its urticating hairs amongst the web. 

 Lipariis aurifiua is out of the running, when scratched against this 

 tyrant. Blessed man, who never fingered his Esauic skin or habita- 

 tion ! The days of Inquisition are over, otherwise the ingenuity born 

 of fiendish inhumanity must certainly have clutched a novel torture — 

 rubbing the naked backs of miserable captives with larval hairs from 



