Xenorchestes Saltitans

Thomas Vernon Wollaston published this drawing in his book ‘Insecta Maderensia’ in 1854. In the book he thanks Westwood for providing the illustrations, ‘Particularly, however, would I draw attention to the valuable help which I have received from J. O. Westwood, Esq., whose pencil has been so elaborately employed in the figures which I am thus enabled to attach, and by whom many of the minutest of the dissections were accomplished, — with a degree of delicacy, moreover, to which I did not myself at the commencement of this Work (though I have since succeeded in anatomizing the larger portion of them, likewise) lay claim.’

321. Xenorchestes saltitans, Woll. (Tab. VIll. fig. 8.). Wollaston wrote the following about this species:

‘Exceedingly rare, and confined to the forest districts of intermediate and lofty elevations,—where it occurs beneath the dead, loosely-attached bark of trees in damp spots. I have taken it at the Ribeiro Frio during the Winter ; and, in July, at the Lombo dos Pecegueiros and the Fanal. It leaps but very imperfectly (not more successfully in fact than the Eucineti),—as indeed the construction of its hind legs (which are not more thickened than the remainder) would lead us to anticipate. From their highly-polished, glabrous, laterally-compressed bodies and saltatorial habits, small female examples bear a singular prima facie resemblance to dark specimens of the common flea.‘