IN THE VOCOiS'KEELINO ISLANDS, 



31 



Seriea) aad EuteUdm (genus Anomala), whose presence, I am 

 tolJ, had been noted in abundance for only a few years previous 

 to my visit. I saw them frequenting almost every oymn llower, 

 towards which they were perfurmiiig the kind fertilising ofReo 

 usually done by bees, whose place they seemed to take. Of 

 Odhoptera, besides the ubiquitous cockroach (Blatta onentalisj^ 

 there were a few Acridldae, and the common locust, which 

 was found in increased numbers after the cyclone. The 

 Hemiptera were represented by several species. 



Of Neuroptera, white ants had spread their baneful hor<les to 

 most of the islands; v^^liile Chrfjsopa imwtatamd dragou-fl ies were 

 very identiful. Immediately after the cyclone the surface of the 

 water was observed to be densely strewn with broken bodies of 

 the latter, as if, in its course, the wind had encountered a cloutl 

 of them, and scattered their mangled remains as it travelled. 

 I did not succeed in collecting any true Stfrnmapiera^ but auts 

 were abundant ; a minute Fire-ant (Camponotus), the common 

 Javan long-legged venomless species, and several black sorts 

 had become domiciled on the islands. Every trading vessel in 

 the tropics has its formicine fauna, and cannot help acting as a 

 traiLspurter of all sorts of ant^ from one region of it to another. 

 Lepidoptera had perhaps increased more than any other family. 

 The Diopcea, so common in Java among the sensitive Mimosa, 

 and a miuute Plume-moth sheltering iimong the red-wwd (Pern-' 

 phis addula), and the 8cmvoIa, were perhaps the most common ; 

 the large Atlas-moth had become a settled resident here, as 

 well tis several modenitely large dinmal species with a habit 

 of pitching on the warm, bare ground and frequenting the 

 GueUirda and the Asdepias cuirasmvica. Among several sorts 

 of flies, an Asihi$f much like the large carnivorous fly common 

 in South Europe, was most conspicuous. 



The Mammalian fauna of the Keelings was an entirely 

 introduced one. A herd of deer on Horsburgh Island, wt\s in- 

 teresting as being a cross between the Javan Eusti {Cermis hip- 

 pehphus) and the darker Sumatran species (Cennts equmus). 

 Pigs ran semi- wild, and throve remarkably well on the broken 

 scraps of cocoa -auts everywhere lying about in the woods. 

 Australian sheep, which fed on the Poriulaca deracea, on 

 a species of grass, and on the tubers of an aroid which they 

 scraped up, did not seem to sidler much from the novel maritime 



