MALTA AND SICILY. 
177 
has occupied a great deal of time, and has 
led to long conversations on the subject of 
our favourite science, respecting which Dr. 
Leach has so much information to communi¬ 
cate. The most remarkable of the Maltese 
insects in his collection were those of the 
genera buprestis ,* scar abacus^ and mantis ,* 
and he had some very curious beetles allied 
to cicindela , with wide flattened bodies: 
they are to be found in summer near St. 
George’s Bay. With a few exceptions, it 
appears that the Maltese butterflies do not 
differ from the British. The swallow-tail 
butterfly, and the death’s-head moth, are 
both common here in the proper season; 
and Dr. Leach had a fine specimen of the 
former, which had just come out of the 
chrysalis. Among the insects not natives of 
* Linnean genera. 
N 
