376 
ELEPHANT HUNT. — MOTHS. — BEES. 
14—17 Oct. 
I4ith. A party of the Klaarwater people, headed by Captain Be- 
reiids, expecthig to be absent two months, set off on an expedition to 
the northward, to hunt elephants, for the purpose of procuring ivory 
tor their next journey to Cape Town. It consisted of about a dozen 
men, with two or three waggons and some of their best horses. 
They were to take the road over Langberg, and, by a circuit, to ex- 
tend their journey as far as Litakun, to trade with the beads they had 
lately brought from the Cape. Other bartering expeditions to the 
same country followed shortly afterwards. 
l5tJi. The evening being very warm, and not a breath of air 
stirring, the canvas flap of my waggon was drawn up for coolness. It 
was such evenings only, which induced the smaller species of moths 
to make their appearance. They now swarmed round my candle, 
only to be burnt ; and the number of the unfortunate nearly 
smothered the wick, and put out the light. I caught, almost 
promiscuously, about five-and-twenty, and was surprised at finding 
amongst them not less than fifteen different sorts. Besides these, a 
great number of small beetles * were very troublesome and annoying, 
entangling themselves in my hair, and flying against the paper upon 
which I was writing. 
\1th. My bedding having been left out in the air all day, we 
found, in the evening, the mattrass taken possession of by a swarm 
of bees, which had taken shelter under it for the night ; and, as a 
favor to these industrious little creatures, we left them undisturbed. 
They remained there till the next day at noon, when they all de- 
parted in quest of some convenient chink in the rock for their hive. 
Their manner of swarming appeared to me to differ in nothing from 
that of the common English honey-bee. The same species, or others 
of the genus [Apis), abounds in every part of this continent which 
* Aphodhts vesperti7ius. B. Totus nigro-castaneus ; vix 2 lineas longus. 
On the same evening I caught a Notoxus, and, for the first time, a large Dorylus, 
an insect which I afterwards found, in the months of November and December, within 
the Cape colony. 
