A Cincinnati Boy in the Tropics. 41 



are better than bad things are bad.' I always get enthusiastic 

 when I write or think about beefsteak or pork. I will .send 

 this letter down the river by one of the Dyak diamond 

 searchers, who has just found a ten carat-stone. He is going 

 down to Martapura to sell it, and if he makes a good sale, he 

 will not do any more work for a year or so. There are no 

 dangerous animals here in Borneo, quite a relief from certain 

 districts in Java, so terribly infested by tigers." The.se Dyaks 

 do not seem to resemble tho.se at Sarawak, as described in a 

 book called " Life in the Jungle." " This book, by the way, is 

 a remarkable instance of how little effect education has on 

 literary success. The writer is a showman's assistant. The 

 same year Forbes' book, the work of a polished English gen- 

 tleman of high scientific attainment, came out, yet Forbes' 

 book is a flat failure, while the other is a model of life-like 

 and interesting narrative. Here in Borneo there are no 

 flowers, and but little life during this wet season to be .seen ; 

 every thing is obliterated and crushed out of existence by this 

 tremendous mass of green foliage. I measured a leaf of a 

 calladiuni and it was ten feet long by seven and one-half feet 

 wide, exclusive of the stem." After returning to India and 

 working up the Chittagong and Assam butterflies, Doherty is 

 again in the Malayan Archipelago, and expects to go into the 

 great "terra incognita" for naturalists, the interior of New 

 Guinea, to collect her unknown trea.sures. He has found 

 hundreds of species of insects entirely new to science, many 

 of which he has described and illu.strated with colored plates 

 in Trans-Asiatic Society. The mo.st extraordinary thing 

 about this remarkable trip is, that he has more than paid all 

 his expenses by the sale of his insects. During the present 

 year his sales will amount to $5,000. He numbers among his 

 purchasers some of the most eminent men of science in the 

 world, such as Lord Walsingham, who buys his minute moths ; 

 Mr. Bates, who buys his Longicorn beetles; Dr. Standinger, of 

 German}', who buys large moths and butterflies; Neumoegen, 

 who buys butterflies ; T. H. Aldrich, of Cincinnati, who buys 

 his shells, and other specialists, who take the different fami- 

 lies. He saN-s, "my beggar-like and dilapidated garb was my 

 safeguard against robbers and thieves, and my running after 

 butterflies was calculated to impress them that I w^as a harm- 

 less lunatic, and so I got through, where a more pretentious 



