Megacriodes saundersii = batocera saundersii (white, 1853)
"remarkable beetles found at simunjon [river], borneo
when i arrived at the mines, on the 14th of march [1855], i had collected in the four preceding months, 320 different kinds of beetles. In less than a fortnight i had doubled this number, an average of about 24 new species every day. On one day i collected 76 different kinds, of which 34 were new to me. By the end of april i had more than a thousand species, and they then went on increasing at a slower rate, so that i obtained altogether in borneo about two thousand distinct kinds, of which all but about a hundred were collected at this place, and on scarcely more than a square mile of ground. The most numerous and most interesting groups of beetles were the longicorns and rhynchophora, both pre-eminently wood-feeders. The former, characterised by their graceful forms and long antenna, were especially numerous, amounting to nearly three hundred species, nine-tenths of which were entirely new, and many of them remarkable for their large size, strange forms, and beautiful colouring. The latter correspond to our weevils and allied groups, and in the tropics are exceedingly numerous and varied, often swarming upon dead timber, so that i sometimes obtained fifty or sixty different kinds in a day. My bornean collections of this group exceeded five hundred species. " (a. R. Wallace). Date: 1869.
Loading...
