Annals of the Transvaal Museum. 
285 
it took some time to disentangle them ; they appeared to be on friendly terms. 
Just next to the open place, where these ants were at work, two specimens of 
Vernonia fastigiata were in flower. They attracted a fair amount of wasps 
and also a most beautiful Mylabrid, the Coryna argentata. Peringuey describes 
this beetle in the Transactions of the Royal Society , Yol. I, part 1, and thinks 
that it is evidently a straggler. I differ from him, since on these Vernonias , 
which I visited for about five days nearly every three hours, I collected twenty - 
two of them. They agree in all respects with the description and the plate 
(where the insect is marked as Coryna elegans ), but some of my specimens are 
considerably smaller. 
There was no road, so we had to leave the tent and wagon at Papai, and 
travelled to the indicated spots only with the barest necessities. Low mopane 
shrub, sometimes with patches of a very thorny Euphorbia made our progress 
rather slow ; it took us more than six hours to cover the distance. We choose 
a magnificent spot for a camping place near one of those wonderful pools 
mentioned above. Everywhere we found traces of the activity of elephants, 
and the banks of the pool were so full of deep holes made by their feet that 
it was extremely difficult to hunt for insects without falling into them. 
Not one shot was fired during the first few days ; but when our hunters 
returned day after day without success we gave up hope of finding elephants 
in the vicinity and started shooting for the pot. Nothing was to be got except 
birds, and after a stay of five days, hunger compelled us to go back to Papai. 
The reason that the elephants were so difficult to find was probably that the 
excessive rains of the previous summer had filled all the pools and every 
depression of the soil, and water was so abundant everywhere that the animals 
were not at all confined to any special locality. 
On the 1st of July we returned to the tent and the following morning 
started for Mazammbo. Our first trek was long and brought us to the chief 
town of Papai. Butterflies were fairly plentiful. Under the tree where we 
outspanned we found the remains of a large number of them, mostly Charaxes 
brutus. Several Melanites leda were captured and it was only here that I found 
the rare Mycalesis spec. ? 
The next place we reached was a kraal called Macafene. Some of the natives 
residing here were armed with bows and poisoned arrows and the number of 
skulls and skins showed sufficiently that these bowmen understand their work. 
From here we proceeded the next morning to Mazammbo. On the road we 
saw several impalas and a fair number of birds. The floods of the previous 
year had left some waterholes, and water-birds (N ycticorax, Plotus, Halcyon , 
black Ibis, and a few others) were enlivening the scenery. 
It was here that a fair number of Pergularia were found. This plant, 
of which I had only found two specimens near Salamanga on the Maputa and 
never anywhere else, was fairly plentiful in some places. 
We camped at a kraal on the eastern side of the Limpopo, opposite the 
large kraal of Mazammbo, which is situated at the western side. It was a 
beautiful spot, which looked very promising. Large trees, belonging to the 
Capparidaceae according to the fruit, gave beautiful shade, old mealie fields 
were quite near, and game was fairly plentiful. The natives seemed to be 
very active in trapping, for we saw a fence of thorn trees and bushes more than 
a mile long, in which openings had been made every 20 yards for the whip- 
traps. 
Unfortunately the weather began to change, clouds appeared, the wind 
turned to a gale, and shortly after it began to rain. This greatly impeded 
our work. Having no tent it was hardly possible to dry plants or to cure 
insects and skins. A native hut was put at our disposal, but it was so dark 
