Microlepidoptera from the Solomon Islands. Additional records and descriptions of Microlepidoptera collected in the Solomon Islands by the Rennell Island Expedition 1953-54

MICROLEPIDOPTERA FROM THE SOLOMON ISLANDS ADDITIONAL RECORDS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF MICROLEPIDOPTERA COLLECTED IN THE SOLOMON ISLANDS BY THE RENNELL ISLAND EXPEDITION 195354 By J. D. BRADLEY AN account (Bradley, 1955) of the expedition to Rennell and Bellona Islands appears in the series The Natural History of Rennell Island, British Solomon Islands, published jointly by the Copenhagen Museum and the British Museum (Natural History). A report on the Microlepidoptera collected on those islands also appears in that series (Bradley, 1957). The Microlepidoptera studied in the present paper are mostly from other islands of the Solomons group which my wife and I visited. A few from the New Hebrides, where we called on the voyage from Australia to the Solomons, have been included, and also some material in the British Museum collections which proved to be errone-ously identified and to belong to a new species described below. Microlepidoptera collected on Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands, ports of call on the voyage to the Solomons, have been studied in a previous paper (Bradley, 1956) and are referred to here only where revision has become necessary. The main purpose of the expedition to the Solomons was to obtain a representative collection of natural history specimens from the islands of Rennell and Bellona. But circumstances provided time and opportunity for visits to some of the other islands in the group, where we collected Lepidoptera and other insects. It is the Microlepidoptera amongst this material, excluding the Pyraloidea, which are now studied. It was nearly four weeks after arriving at Honiara, the Protectorate capital on the island of Guadalcanal, before there was a definite prospect of a boat to take us across the last two hundred miles of ocean to our objective Rennell Island. In this interval we were fortunate in being invited by Dr. F. R. Hollins, the then S.M.O. and a keen lepidopterist, to accompany him on a visit to Ontong Java, an atoll in the extreme north of the group. This trip included visits to the islands of Tulagi and Ysabel. After our return from Rennell and Bellona to Guadalcanal nearly two months elapsed before the cargo ship on which we were to leave for Australia finally ENTOM. 10, 4. 9