unfortunately bore witness. I was very anxious to secure these, and eventually did so, though I was compelled to purchase them from the Menagerie of Fillis's Circus—then performing in Pretoria—to which they had become annexed. I brought a male and female of these birds safely home to England with me, with a collection of other living creatures—a collection, however, which had for family reasons to be compulsorily broken up, after a Baboon had escaped from his cage and dismantled the drawing-room. Other living birds which I obtained from this district were the Black Goshawk (Melierax niger) and the Black-shouldered Kite (Elanus cæruleus).
Many of my visits to Pienaars River were of purely entomological interest. The thick bush and old timber were features unknown to the high veld, and the distance of some sixty miles introduced the collector to an almost new insect fauna. In March, towards the end of the warm season, the butterfly genus Teracolus is well represented. In this month I took, and not singly, T. subfasciatus, T. eris, T. agoye, T. auxo, T. evenina, T. achine, and T. phlegetonia; all these may therefore be considered as more or less forest or bush-haunting species. Besides butterflies, I also secured many undescribed species of moths, but these must be sought about November in the warm rainy period. In Coleoptera, as the wooded country would suggest, many Longicornia are to be obtained, and I was told by Mr. Thomsen, who collected there, that he procured some species by smartly tapping old trees with a stone near where the wellknown borings were observed, when the beetles,—probably Prionidæ, and very possibly Macrotoma palmata,—would come up sufficiently near to be seized cautiously and carefully by the antennæ. I tried the experiment myself, unsuccessfully, but can implicitly rely on the authenticity of my informant. This device was quite new to me, and is I believe generally unrecorded. But searching for beetles under bark is a course likely to prove introductory to new acquaintances, as near this neighbourhood I once found beneath the bark of an old tree-stump, some three feet above the ground, a pair of the Ophidian Trimerorhinus tritæniatus.
It may be mentioned, in conclusion, that in this wild spot my sojourn was made possible by the existence of a good hostelry
