Mr. P. H. Gosse on the Insects of Jamaica. 109 
a slightly impressed line down the middle, which runs into a 
triangular depression in front of the scutellum ; scutellum white, 
without apparent punctures. 
Elytra, each furnished with nine deeply impressed lines, the 
third (from the suture) joined at the tip with the eighth, fourth 
and seventh joined at the tip, and the third and fourth also joined 
at the tip and connected with the fourth by a branch. 
Hab. Philippine Islands. Mus. Brit. 
Elytra considerably depressed above, the base somewhat mar- 
gined close to the thorax; each elytron with the lateral edge 
widely sinuated, the end rounded. 
Legs strong, the anterior pair close together at the base ; tibise 
short, slightly bisinuated within ; tarsi with the two basal joints 
narrow, the second subquadrate and both grooved at the base, 
the third subrotuudate, somewhat widest in front, grooved at the 
base, and furnished on the sole with very close thick-set hairs. 
This subgenus would almost appear to connect the two sub- 
divisions Cryptopygi and Gymnopygi of the family Calandridce 
of Schcenherr (Genera et Species Curculionidum, viii. p. 334) ; 
with the former it nearly agrees in the position of the antennse, 
being about the middle of the beak (which however, as in Bren- 
tida and many Cu?-culionida, may be only a sexual distinction) ; 
with the latter in the pygidium being exposed, or not covered by 
the elytra. The form may thus prove interesting as one of those 
links which serve to show how families, subdivisions and genera 
lapse into each other. In appearance, judging by Schcenherr's 
description, this in external colour seems to resemble his Pote- 
riophorus niveus, iv. 846. 
The figure, carefully made, of the natural size, by Mr. Wm. 
Wing, will show its form, the profile, and also the markings of 
the only species which was found by Mr. Cuming, F.L.S., at the 
north end of Luzon in the Philippine Islands in the province of 
Cagayan. 
[XII. — On the Insects of Jamaica. By Philip Henry Gosse. 
^HE following is a very imperfect list of the Insects collected 
ly me during a residence of about a year and a half in Jamaica : 
iperfect, because many species seem to be as yet unnamed, 
id also because many others which I omitted to register with 
number, it would now be exceedingly difficult to determine, 
[mperfect as it is, however, I communicate it, as local lists are 
Iways useful to science : and I shall use this one as a vehicle 
for recording a few scattered notices of individual species, which, 
though too trivial to form separate papers, may yet, as isolated 
facts, be worth preserving from oblivion. 
110 Mr. P. H. Gosse on I Ik- htsecls of Jamaica. 
I had left England with high expectations of the richness of 
tlie West Indian entomology : large and gaily-coloured beetles, 
1 supposed, would be crawling on almost every shrub, gorgeous 
butterHies be filling the air, moths be swarming about the 
forest-edges at night, and caterpillars be beaten from every bush. 
These expectations were far from being realized ; a few species of 
butterflies, chiefly Pieris, Callidryns, Terias, Heliconia Charitonia, 
Argymiis Passijlorce, and A. Delila, Cystineura Mardania, and one 
or two Nyrnphalid(B and L/yccmadce, are indeed common enough 
at all times, and in almost all situations ; others are abundant 
at a particular season or locality ; but in general butterflies are to 
be obtained only casually. Moths are still more rare : I had pro- 
vided myself with bull^s-eye lanterns, and repeatedly took them out 
after nightfall, carefully searching the banks and hedges by the 
sides of roads, the margins of woods, &c., but never, in this way, 
took a single specimen. At some seasons, however, as Decem- 
ber, and more particularly June, on rainy nights, hundreds of 
little NoctuadcB, Pyralidae, Geometrada, Tineadce, &c. fly in at 
the open windows, and speckle the ceiling, or flutter around the 
glass-shades with which the candles are protected from the 
draughts. A good many small beetles, and other things, also 
fly in on such occasions, and several interesting species I have 
taken in this way which I never saw at any other time. But in 
general beetles and the other orders are extremely scarce, and 
especially Diptera ; I have often been astonished at the paucity 
of these, as compared with their abundance in Canada, the 
Southern United States, and other localities (in which I have 
collected) during the hot weather. One may often walk a mile, — 
I do not mean in the depth of the forest, but in situations com- 
paratively open, beneath an unclouded sun, — and not see more 
than a dozen specimens of all orders. Nor is the beating of 
bushes productive of insects and their larvse, as I have fomid 
it in North America. In Canada I have shaken ofi" perhaps 
twenty species of lepidopterous larvse in the course of an hour 
or two on an autumnal morning ; but I think I have seen scarcely 
more than half that number of caterpillars in Jamaica during a 
year and a halFs collecting. 
To this scarcity of insects however there are two or three local 
and seasonal exceptions. And this leads me to speak of the prin- 
cipal localities where I have collected my specimens, and to give a 
brief description of them, which yet will be but supei-fieial, ow ing 
to my ignorance of botany and geology. 
Bluefields. — I begin with this place, because it was the 
centre of my operations, and my stated residence during my 
whole sojourn in the island. Bluefields was once a sugar-estate, 
situated on a gentle slope, about a quarter of a mile from the 
Mr. P. H. Gosse on the Insects of Jamaica. Ill 
sea-shore. The greater part is now what is called ruinate, being 
covered with a dense and tangled mass of second growth, chiefly 
logwood, interspersed with calabashes (Crescm^ia) and many fruit- 
trees, such as the Avocada pear {Persea), orange-trees, mangoes^ 
cocoa-nuts, Blighia sapida, guavas, papaws, and the diiFerent kinds 
of Anona. About a dozen acres are kept open, in pasture, in which 
there grow many flowering weeds, as Argemone, Stachytarpheta, 
small Passiflorce, Asclepias, &c. Tlie fences consist of "dry 
walls,^' that is, low walls built up of loose stones without cement. 
Over these sprawl various kinds of Cereus, Aristolochia, Aroidece, 
and beautiful Convolvuli, Ipomaa and Echites; while at their 
bases spring up numberless bushes of Lantana, of several species, 
always covered with their cheerful blossom, Cleome, and many pa- 
pilionaceous and other flowering plants. The out-buildings of a 
sugar-estate, as the mill, the boiling-house, &c., still stand, but 
as mere skeletons ; the bare walls, the beams and rafters yet 
remaining, but the planking of the floors and the shingles of the 
roofs almost quite gone. These buildings present a curious ap- 
pearance ; for with the singular rapidity of tropical vegetation, 
the whole interior is occupied with young trees, already over- 
topping the roof, and slender liancs hang down like cords from 
one to another, or are thrown in loops over the beams ; while 
elegant ferns of many kinds spring from every crevice of the 
walls both within and without, and, curving outwards, depend 
in the most graceful forms. Various insects have established 
themselves in these ruined outhouses : the earthen floor of one is 
pierced with the burrows of a red Sphex, numbers of which are 
coming and going, and wheeling hither and thither close to the 
ground all day long ; and in the dry dust of another are hun- 
dreds of the conical pit-falls of a Myrmcleon larva, the manners 
of which I found to agree exactly with those described by Reau- 
mur. The soil of Bluefields is a friable whitish marl ; its ele- 
vation may be from 50 to 100 feet above the sea. 
Bluefields Mountain. — Immediately behind the spot I 
have been describing rises the loftiest elevation of the western 
portion of Jamaica. The Peak, which I may have occasion to 
mention once or twice, is estimated to be 2560 feet above the 
sea, but this, as well as the summit of the ridge generally, is 
covered with a dense and tangled forest, except that here and 
there in isolated spots the negroes have chopped down and 
"burned over" an acre or two, and planted cocoas [Colocasia) 
and plantains. As they do not reside here, however, but in the 
lowlands, visiting their mountain-gardens one day in a week, for 
cultivation or for collecting the produce, the solitude is scarcely 
broken, and the ])rinueval wildness of nature is scarcely affected 
by these trivial intrusions. That giant. of the lowlands, the 
1 12 Mr. P. H. Gosse on the Insects of Jamaica. 
cotton-tree [Eriodendron), reaches not to these elevated regions, 
but its place is 8up])lied by scarcely less bulky fig-trees, whose 
hoary trunks and broad horizontal limbs are a perfect nursery of 
Orchidacece and Bromeliacece ; and magnificent Santa Marias (C'c- 
lophyllum), broad-leafs (Terwino/m ?), and parrot-berries (S/oanea) 
tower up to an enormous pre-eminence above their fellows. 
Dense thickets of joint-wood {Piper geniculatum ?) grow in 
large patches to the exclusion of every thing else : in other 
places the trees are tall, slender, and somewhat open in growth ; 
but the edge of the woods is formidable with cutting sedges 
and spinous Solanacea, relieved by beautiful tufts of Cann.cE. The 
mountain cabbage and the long-thatch are the prevalent forms 
of Palmce; tree-ferns are abundant, and caulescent species of 
great beauty climb to the summits of tall trees; while in the 
damp and dark hollows, and by the sides of the winding paths 
which lead to the negroes' grounds, terrestrial ferns of many 
species grow in luxuriant profusion. Such a scene, beautiful as 
it is, is not favourable to the development of insect existence ; 
a few species occur there which are not elsewhere met with ; but 
it is at a rather lower range, at the brow of the mountain, that I 
have found more success in entomologizing. A property of con- 
siderable extent is here partially reclaimed, and devoted to the 
growth of the pimento and coifee; and though its back is 
bounded by the dark and tangled forest-peaks I have alluded to, 
its area displays a very different aspect. Five hundred feet of 
elevation produce some difference in vegetation, and probably 
the openness of the cleared ground still more. The bamboo, 
planted along the sides of the shelving road, throws its gigantic 
plumes overhead ; the mahoe {Hibiscus) displays its large and 
showy flowers ; the scarlet blossoms of Malaviscus arboreus and 
the crimsoned ones of some species of Melastomacea, beautify the 
edge of the forest, and large beds of Urena lobata border the 
road. In such parts as have been cultivated for a few years, 
and then (according to the custom of West Indian agriculture) 
allowed to run to waste, bushes of numberless kinds have sprung 
up, many of which are in blossom at all seasons. Though the 
flowers of most of these are individually small and inconspicuous, 
yet from their profusion they present an attraction to Hymenopte- 
rous and Lepidopterous insects ; and such a wilderness of vege- 
tation is usually more or less productive to the entomologist. 
In this particular locality I have usually found butterflies pretty 
numerous, principally Nymphalida and Hesperiadcs, and those of 
sorts rarely found in the lowlands ; but from the tangled cha- 
racter of the "bush,'' and from the height of the blossomed 
summits about which they hover, they are less readily obtained 
than observed. It is to this scene that I shall allude when I 
lAv. F. II. (xosse OH the Insects of Jamaica. 113 
have occasion to mention Bluefields ■Mountain, distingnishing 
the loftier and more wooded region as Bkicficlds Peak. 
S VBiTO. — In going from Bluefields to Savanna le mar, the 
road for some miles borders the sea-shorCj which at first is a 
sandy beach, but soon rises to a shelving, rubbly sort of cliiF, at 
the top of which the highway passes. The first portion, extend- 
ing to about a mile from Bluelields, is called Sabito Bottom ; the 
soil here is a heavy sand, mixed with shingle, doubtless washed 
up by the surf in heavy gales ; large masses of the Jamaica lily 
(Paiio-atium) spring up on each side of the path; a narrow belt 
of single trees, chiefly of the sea-side grape {Coccoloba) on the 
left hand, overhang both the road and the sea-beach, and on the 
light a dark and fetid morass is hidden by great bushes of the 
black-withe. This would seem an unpromising place for a col- 
lector, and yet it forms one of the signal exceptions I have men- 
tioned to the general paucity of insects. Many magnificent but- 
tertiies frequent this bottom, as Aganisthos Orion, Charaxes 
Cadmus, Charaxes Astyanax, Papilio Pelaus, P. Cresphontes, 
P. Poli/damas, P. Murcellinus and other Papilionida, besides 
more common Ix;pidoptera. And when we get up the hill, 
where the trees are manchioneel, cedar (Cedrela), mahogany, 
bidly-tree [AcJij-as], log-wood, &c., with the fragrant wild coffee 
{Tetramerium odoratissimiim) , the })apaw, the trumpet-tree [Ce- 
cropia), the beautiful Spanish jasmines [Plumeria alba et rubra), 
festooned with the noble tubular blossom of Portlandia, — we find 
insects very numerous. Many species of Pieris, Callidryas, Terias ; 
of Nywphalida, Heliconia Charitonia; of Lyctpnadce, of Hespe- 
riada, and not a few of other orders, are at most seasons abun- 
dant here. A large portion of my insect-spoils was collected in 
this locality. 
Belmont. — Pursuing the same sea-side road, but in an oppo- 
site direction from Bluefields, we come to the estate of Belmont. 
It is very sandy, close to the sea, and on the same level Avith 
Sabito Bottom ; yet it possesses some peculiarities both in botany 
and entomology. Prickly Acacias of several species border the 
road, intermingled profusely with the formidable pinguin {B)-o- 
rnelia Pinguin). The fences are logwood hedges, over which tr.iil 
many beautiful creepers, as different kinds of Iponiaa, and the 
lovely Clitoria P/vmieri ; and passion-flowers throw their feeble 
stems and entwine their tendrils among the shrubs and herbaceous 
plants that fringe th(! road-sides. Some small Melitcea, Cystineura 
Mardania, and Charaxes Astt/anax ; some pretty low-flying Glau- 
cnpidfP and Pyra/ido', haunt these lanes, and a few rare Coleoptera 
have been taken from the shrubs. 
CoNTKXT. — About fifteen miles to the eastward of Bluefields, 
on the road which winds up from Black River towards Hamp- 
Ann. S; Mag. X. Hist. Ser. 2. Vol. i. 8 
114 Mr. P. H. Gosse on the Insects of Jamaica. 
stead, and the summit of the Luana mountains, stands a little 
cottage called by this name, singularly situated on a mass of bare 
rock on the steep mountain-side. Above, below and around is 
the primaeval forest, scarcely interrupted by the small and widely- 
scattered clearings that here and there occur. From so singular 
a position — the tops of the trees immediately beneath the little 
space that surrounds the dwelling scarcely reaching to the level 
of its base — the eye commands a magnificent prospect, embra- 
cing the sinuous coast, from Pedro BluiF on the east as far as 
Mount Edgecumbe on the west, ranging over the sombre inter- 
vening forest with the cultivated openings, and resting on the 
broad savannas and flooded meadows that surround Black River ; 
this town with its bay and shipping in the distance, and the 
course of the river itself visible at intervals, winding like a silver 
thread through the dark morass. 
The high-road, passing just behind and above the cottage, 
climbs the mountain in the zigzag direction so frequently adopted 
in Jamaica, to diminish the steepness of the ascent ; and it is a 
mile or two of this road that forms the most remarkable excep- 
tion to the general scarcity of insects that I have noticed. During 
the month of June the shrubs and trees that border the road 
(which is cut through the forest) are alive with insects of all 
orders, but particularly Coleoptera ; many species of Longicornes, 
Lampyrida, Buprestidce, Cassididce, Chrysomelida, &c., occur by 
hundreds on the twigs and leaves ; and the air is alive with 
buttei'flies, Hymenoptera and Diptera. I cannot at all tell why 
this abundance exists ; it is very local ; beyond a certain point, 
the road, the forest, seem to be unchanged, but the insects have 
ceased : it is very temporary also ; it suddenly commences about' 
the end of May, and by the middle of July scarcely a dozen 
beetles are seen where there were thousands. I might have sup- 
posed it a casual thing, if I had had but one season's experience ; 
but in 1846 it was the same as in 1845, the same abundance at 
precisely the same season, and with the same local limits. It is 
worthy of record, that at the same time and place the leaves of 
the trees were studded with shelled Mollusca, of the genera 
Helix, Helicina, Cyclostoma, &c., as I never saw them elsewhere. 
It is not improbable that some peculiarities in the geological 
or the botanical character of this region would account for what 
I have mentioned ; but I regret that of this I have no knowledge. 
The mahoe {Hibiscus tiliaceus), the bastard cedar {Guazuma 
ulmifolia), the mammee sapota [Lucuma mammosa), the locust 
{Hymencea Coubaril) and the trumpet-tree {Cecropia Peltata), are 
some of the forest-trees, with others called burn-wood and down- 
tree, of which I know not the systematic appellation. But there 
is one tree which grows numerously in that locality, which I 
Remarks on the Great Oolite of Minchinhampton. 115 
suppose to have some influence on tlie Jjcpidoptera and Ilymeno- 
ptera ; it is provincially called the potatoe- wood ; it is at that 
time covered with blossoms, which, though they grow in thick 
racemes, offer nothing pleasing to the sight or the scent. But 
these form the centres of attraction to the insects I have named ; 
Pierides and Theclce in particular flutter around the summits in 
considerable numbers, and swarms of small beetles and flies. 
The Bauhinia displays its elegant blossoms, and in one corner a 
large patch of Cassia attracts Papiliones and Coliades; but in 
general there is an almost total lack of the flowering herbaceous 
vegetation that fringes the roads in most other places. It is 
remarkable also that the trees in these woods are nearly, if not 
quite, destitute of epiphyte Orchidacece, which are so abundant on 
Bluefields Mountain at a similar elevation, that hardly a tree is 
without one or more specimens. But in other respects the cha- 
racter of the vegetation in the two regions differs greatly. 
This district I habitually visited every alternate week, very 
frequently spending eight or ten days at a time with my worthy 
friends at Content. Probably two-thirds at least of my collec- 
tion of insects were the result of my labours here. The eleva- 
tion of the region may be assumed (I speak only from my own 
estimate) as ranging from 1500 to 2000 feet above the sea. 
Before I leave this subject, I would add, that during the period 
of insect-abundance on the Hampstead road, a large number of 
species were taken by flying in at the open windows of Content 
cottage by night. Many valuable specimens occurred in this 
way, not only of the crepuscular and nocturnal Lepidoptera, but 
of other orders in considerable variety. Curculionidce, Longicornes 
and LamptjridfB were very numerous. I am inclined to think 
that a far greater number of insects are active by night than 
by day. 
At length then I proceed to the list of species, defen'ing the 
notice of a few other less important localities until they arise. 
[To be continued.] 
XIII. — A few general Remarks on the Fossil Conchology of the 
Great Oolite of Minchinhampton in comparison with that of the 
same Formation in other localities. By John Lycett, Esq.* 
The following observations have been suggested to me by a re- 
mark of Dr. Buckland in his Bridgwater Treatise, and which 
has since been occasionally quoted and repeated by others ; — in 
effect, that during the vast period when the secoHdary formations 
• Read before the Cot«wo!d Naturalists' Club at Purton, August 3, J 817. 
8*