mi-) 243 



butterflies I had seen ! An hour's sojourn beside a gorse bush on 

 Hampstead Heath would have afforded more — and brighter coloured 

 — specimens than this ! 



As for birds, Narseer and his brother, whose fame has been 

 celebrated by Mr. Sharpe, and their boys, over a space of twenty 

 days did not average more than two birds each a day ; and yet the 

 result when sent home has, I daresay, caused the casual observer to 

 exclaim : " What an abundance of beautiful birds there must be in 

 those parts !" 



I do not know whether I am specially unfortunate, but once, and 

 once only, in all my travels, did I see butterflies in anything like that 

 profusion that most zoological travellers seem to consider the usual 

 thing : it was in the centre of the Malay peninsula, at a place called 

 Chindrass, a road had been made across a marsh, and at a rather damp 

 place, the ground was simply covered with butterflies, busy sucking at 

 the moisture ; there were not many species, but the number of speci- 

 mens was something enormous, the commonest was an orange-coloured, 

 elongate- winged Pier is and a Papilio, closely allied to P. Rhada- 

 tnanthus, was also in large numbers ; looking over the lot I picked out 

 a Charaxes as a desideratum, and, on popping the net over it, took 

 about a dozen of the common Pieris as well, while a whole cloud rose 

 into the air. 



In one of these papers I have mentioned* notice is taken of the 

 apparent scarcity of caterpillars in the Tropics ; this is quite true, the 

 same thing has struck me : beat, sweep, or look where you will, there 

 are none to be found, but they are not far off all the same, for, plant 

 vegetables on any newly-reclaimed piece of ground, and you will have 

 the greatest difficulty in preventing their being destroyed by swarms 

 of larvae. "We must fall back upon Darwin for the reason, I suppose ; 

 it is only those larvae that are peculiarly gifted with modes of conceal- 

 ment that have any chance of surviving the continual search made 

 after them by numerous enemies. Large quantities of larvae entail 

 large quantities of moths, and large quantities there are in some more 

 favoured localities ; in a very new clearing, where butterflies are 

 almost absent, moths are usually very abundant, and this I ascribe to 

 1 the bats, like the butterflies, not yet having found their way there ; 

 1 when first I opened up the jungle down here, the floor of the house 

 . was absolutely littered of a morning by the quantities of moths'-wings 

 : lying about ; attracted from underneath the forest cover b}^ the light, 

 | they had flown into the house which then had no windows or doors, 



* Mr. Kirby's Translation of M. C. Pieper's remarks on the habits of butterflies in the East 

 Indian Islands. 



