INTRODUCTION xxxvii 



rarities without a wholesale slaughter. Flowers, except a few fleshy kinds that easily 

 decay, are not attractive to beetles, excepting some species of Nitidulidae and the 

 Elaterid genus Eopentlies. The minute and obscure Diptera, the endemic species 

 largely consisting of small Dolichopodidae, which shrink and distort on drying, and 

 of infinite numbers of Drosophilidae, many of these also becoming distorted, have been 

 little collected. 



It is quite certain that only a fraction of the fauna has yet been collected, and that 

 the groups are very unequally known. The small group of native dragon flies may not 

 be greatly added to and the aculeate Hymenoptera are fairly collected, both of these 

 being as one might almost say obtrusively present as a whole, as compared with other 

 insects, of which but few species are both numerous and conspicuous at the same time. 

 On the other hand three hundred species of DrosopJiila would be a moderate estimate 

 of those existing. It is possible that half the number of existing species of insects have 

 been collected, but this is by no means certain. 



During the last ten years, since the annexation of the islands, it has gradually 

 become much more easy to get about than was the case during the chief period of my 

 collecting, and many mountain localities have been opened up, which before were 

 impossible for the collector or at least very difficult of access. At the same time the 

 existing forest is being much more strictly preserved from destruction. 



I did much of my collecting from a small tent, which, usually, I had packed for me 

 on horse or mule over the lower slopes to the lower edge of the forest and from that 

 point packed it myself with the necessary supplies and collecting apparatus into the 

 heart of the forest. Skinning birds and pinning insects while either sitting on the 

 ground or lying down was at first troublesome, but after a time seemed natural enough. 

 In some very wet forests, where I had to spend much time for the birds, I was obliged 

 to carry a limited supply of oil and a small oil-stove on account of the difficulty or 

 impossibility of making a fire on my arrival at night after a long day's collecting, during 

 the continuous and heavy rains. But such cases were exceptional, and otherwise, after 

 a little practice, it was always possible to build a fire in the open (even in very wet 

 weather) for the purpose of cooking rice, — practically the only cooking that the habitual 

 camper-out need attempt. This with coffee and sugar and one or two kinds of tinned 

 meats (in addition to a tent, clothing and apparatus) will be found as much as the 

 collector will care to pack on his back in so rough a country, and I found the stove and 

 oil a sore burden, very reluctantly assumed. Except for very special purposes I never 

 took a native with me on these camping expeditions, partly because it was almost 

 impossible to get one man to go without companions and partly because the impedi- 

 menta would be proportionately increased as the number to be fed and sheltered was 

 added to. In some of these untrodden forests many of the birds (excluding the most 

 wide-ranging species which seem generally to have more or less fear or shyness of man 

 and the little fly-catchers, which are everywhere very tame or inquisitive) were absolutely 



