Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 8.djvu/288

Rh therefore, probable that they will abstain from interference with others under circumstances much more favourable to the fish.

Some specimens from the South Island are much prettier than any we possess; but nearly all the members of this class being nameless as yet, I can give little information respecting them.

Etaphylinus oculatus, a carrion beetle, may be accepted as the type of this section, as well as of the indigenous carrion-feeders. This class, divided into thirteen families, comprising some seven hundred species in Britain alone, furnishes my cabinet with rather less species than the number of families I have mentioned. I possess six from Canterbury, differing from ours mostly in unimportant details; but two of our species are rather more finely-coloured than those of the South Island. I found numerous individuals of one small, dull species, on the sea beach of the East Coast under Algæ, even to a depth of two feet below the surface. Of the Brachelytra, it may be confidently asserted that New Zealand will not provide much more than a fiftieth of the number of species found in Britain, and none at all equal to those which adorn the cabinet of the British collector.

The Carrion, or Burying Beetles so abundant in most other countries, do not appear to have been equally partial to New Zealand. I possess two species of Histeridæ, one of them closely resembling those which occur in the South Island, neither of them have been described as yet, so far as I am aware. I have taken two other Carrion-feeders (besides Staphylinus oculatus), which I believe will exhaust the list, so far as really indigenous insects of the class is concerned. The small blue and red insect, found in considerable numbers amongst bones and decaying animal matter, is an importation from abroad named Necrobia rujipes.

Of the Melolonthidæ, the most familiar to us is the brilliant green Pyronota festiva, abundant for the greater portion of the year on Leptospermum, and unfortunately on such of our orchard trees as bear stone fruit; being exclusively vegetable feeders, they are exceedingly injurious to the trees we so desire to preserve. This insect varies in colour; I have taken several varieties, though all have a bright metallic hue. I have occasionally captured an insect, resembling Pyronota festiva, but four times larger which I imagine to be Stethaspis suturalis, most probably the finest specimen of the group we shall find. It is more common at Wellington than Auckland. Odontria striata, a rather handsome beetle, as well as two species belonging to Rhysotrogus, I have, now and then, found in the morning entangled in spiders' webs, but, not under other circumstances, and am therefore