7^ JAVA. 63 



corroding tropical rains of centuries are only now liegiuning to 

 exhume them. 



About the only piece of exposed strata in this part of JaA'a, 

 1 believe, lay within a few miles of my hut. Out of it I picked 

 fossil fragments of vegetable stems, and of broken Odraa 



and Pecten shells, closely resembling those still in the adjacent 

 seas, and showing that an elevation of some 200 to 300 feet had 

 taken place here at a recent period. That these subterranean 

 forces whose activity resulted in the varied physical changes 

 which West Java has experienced (such as the subsidence of 

 the Sunda Straits), had not ceased, was brought home to me 

 with all the vivid ancl indescribable sensations that accompany 

 ones first experience of powerful and unwonted phenomena. 



On the 28th of March, 1879, about eight o'clock in the even- 

 ing, while sitting under my verandah, a sudden shiver and 

 a violent bumping wave passed as it were through me and 

 under my feet, bewildering me, but affording me the ineradicable 



experience of a violent earthquake. For some thirty seconds 

 my hut and ail its contents were lustily shaken, but other^^ise 

 no harm was done. Some forty miles away, ho^vever, at the 

 base of the Gede volcano, the village of Tjanjoor was wrecked 

 and several lives lost amid the falling houses, while on the 

 following day volumes of smoke and ashes were emitted by the 

 mountain whose summit formed the background of my view 





One of my most interesting discoveries here was a case of 

 mimicry in a spider, of the kind named alluring coloration by 

 Mr. Wallace. The spider itself, to which I had given the 

 provisional name oi Thomisus decipens, has proved interesting 

 as the tvpe of a new genus, named OrnithscaMdes by the 

 Kev. 0. V. Cambridge. The great interest attaching to this 

 find, however, is on account of its habits. I had been allured 

 into a vain chase after one of those large, stately flittii. 

 butterflies (Hestia) through a thicket of prickly Pandanns 

 horridus, to the detriment of my apparel and the loss ot m> 

 temper, when on the bush that obstructed my farther pursuit 

 I observed one of the Eesperiid^ at rest on a leaf on a birds 

 dropping. I had often observed small Clues at rest on sim ar 

 spafs on the ground, and have often wondered what tbe member, 

 of such a refined U beautifully painted famdy -^^^^^f^^ 

 nid^ could find to enjoy at food seemingly so incongruous for 



