CABACAS 
305 
VENEZUELA. 1 
March 17th—March 31st, 1907. 
I landed on the Venezuelan shore for the second time March 17th, 
1907, but on this occasion the whole afternoon was spent in strug¬ 
gling with the authorities of the port, so that it was necessary to 
spend a night at La G-uaira. The next day a few minutes’ halt at 
Zigzag Station, about 1500 ft. up the railway to the capital, enabled 
me to sample the insect fauna. Butterflies were very plentiful, and 
I ran back to the railway carriage with specimens of Actinote antaeas, 
Dbl. & H.; Euptychia phares, Godart, a species that I did not see 
again; Phyciodes leucodesma, Terias albula, and Hesjperia syrichthus ; 
together with sundry Wasps, Bugs, and Grasshoppers. These included 
a large Polistes with dark wings and pale tarsi; the Bee, Melipona 
capitata, Smith, and the conspicuous greyish-black, purple-winged 
social wasp, Synoeca cyanea, var. ultramarina. The Bugs, narrow 
brown fellows, were Catorrhintha guttula, Fabr. 
The railway, after many terror-inspiring twists, which made us 
glad that it was under British administration, gains access to the 
capital by a gap in the mountains on its western side. 
Caracas stands at a mean altitude of 3200 ft. above the sea in 
North Lat. 10° 30'. The city is beautifully situated on a plateau 
sloping southwards to the Bio Guaire; this plateau is open to the 
East towards Petare, closed to the West by the Observatory Hill 
some 300 ft. above the plain; on the South it is bounded by two 
low ridges that separate Caracas from El Valle, but on the North it 
is dominated by a lofty range of mountains, which, rising abruptly 
from the valley, culminate to the North-West in Silla, 8760 ft., and 
Naiguata, 9300 ft. 
The Observatory commands a grand prospect, but the path leading 
to it was far from productive, yielding only Phyciodes anieta y Hew.; 
Synchloe lacinia, Hiibn., the dark form; Leptotes cassius , both 
sexes; Terias elathea , a male, an aberration of the “moderately 
dry ” form in which there was no trace of the usually conspicuous 
longitudinal black streak, and scarcely any of the orange border 
thereto ; also Hesperia notata , Blanch., the only example taken. 
The village of El Valle stands at about the same level as 
Caracas, some four miles to the south, and as it is conveniently placed 
at the terminus of a tramway I visited it three times, but my first 
1 This section is reprinted almost as it first appeared in the Entomologist's Monthly 
Magazine , 2nd Series, vol. xix., 1908, pp. 69-76, 118-128. 
X 
