How TO CATCH Moths. 97 



not close to virgin forest, and surrounded by other houses 

 whose lights were a counter-attraction ; still more fi-equently 

 residence in a dark palm-thatched house, with a lofty roof, in 

 whose recesses every moth was lost the instant it entered. 

 This last was the greatest drawback, and the real reason 

 why I never again was able to make a collection of moths ; 

 for I never afterward lived in a solitary jungle-house with a 

 low-boarded and whitewashed veranda, so constructed as to 

 prevent insects at once escaping into the upper part of the 

 house quite out of reach. After my long experience, my nu- 

 merous failures, and my one success, I feel sure that if any 

 party of naturalists ever make a yacht-voyage to explore the 

 Malayan Archipelago or any other tropical region, making 

 entomology one of their chief pursuits, it would well repay 

 them to carry a small-framed veranda, or a veranda-shaped 

 tent of white canvas, to set up in every favorable situation, as a 

 means of making a collection of nocturnal Lepidoptera, and 

 also of obtaining rare specimens of Coleoptera and other in- 

 sects. I make the suggestion here, because no one would sus- 

 pect the enormous difference in results that such an apparatus 

 would produce, and because I consider it one of the curiosi- 

 ties of a collectoi-'s experience to have found out that some 

 such apparatus is required. 



When I returned to Singapore I took with me the Malay 

 lad named Ali, who subsequently accompanied me all over 

 the Archipelago. Charles Allen preferred staying at the 

 Mission-house, and afterward obtained employment in Sara- 

 wak and in Singapore, till he again joined me four years 

 later at Amboyna, in the Moluccas. 



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