Catching Moths. 95 



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turned to Sarawak for Christmas (the second I had spent 

 with Sir James Brooke), when all the Europeans both in the 

 town and from the out-stations enjoyed the hospitality of 

 the Rajah, who possessed in a pre-eminent degree the art of 

 making every one around him comfortable and happy. 



A few days afterward I returned to the mountain with' 

 Charles and a Malay boy named Ali, and staid there three 

 weeks for the purpose of making a collection of land-shells, 

 butterflies and moths, ferns and orchids. On the hill itself 

 ferns were tolerably plentiful, and I made a collection of 

 about forty species. But what occupied me most was the 

 great abundance of moths which on certain occasions I was 

 able to capture. As during the whole of my eight years' 

 wanderings in the East I never found another spot where 

 these insects were at all plentiful, it will be interesting to 

 state the exact conditions under which I here obtained them. 



On one side of the cottage there was a veranda, looking 

 down the whole side of the mountain and to its summit on 

 the right, all densely clothed with forest. The boarded 

 sides of the cottage were whitewashed, and the roof of the 

 veranda was low, and also boarded and whitewashed. As 

 soon as it got dark I placed my lamp on a table against the 

 wall, and with pins, insect-forceps, net, and collecting-boxes 

 by my side, sat down with a book. Sometimes during the 

 whole evening only one solitary moth would visit me* while 

 on other nights they would pour in in a continual stream, 

 keeping me hard at work catching and pinning till past mid- 

 night. They came literally by thousands. These good 

 nights were very few. During the four weeks that I sjDent 

 altogether on the hill I only had four really good nights, and 

 these were always rainy, and the best of them soaking wet. 

 But wet nights were not always good, for a rainy moonlight 

 night produced next to nothing. All the chief tribes of 

 moths were represented, and the beauty and variety of the 

 species was very great. On good nights I was able to cap- 

 ture fi-om a hundred to two hundred and fifty moths, and 

 these comprised on each occasion from half to two-thirds^ 

 that number of distinct species. Some of them would settle 

 on the wall, some on the table, while many would fly up to 

 the roof and sjive me a chase all over the veranda before I 



