830 Voyage to Batchian. 



after pinning out the specimens, I pi'oceeded to write the 

 name of tlie place on small circular tickets and attach one to 

 each, even the old kapala, the Mohammedan priest, and some 

 Malay traders could not repress signs of astonishment. If they 

 had known a little more about the ways and oiDinions of white 

 men, they would probably have looked upon me as a fool or 

 a madman, but in their ignorance they accepted my operations 

 as worthy of all respect, although utterly beyond their com- 

 prehension. 



The next day (October 16th) I went beyond the swamp, 

 and found a place where a new clearing was being made in 

 the virgin forest. It was a long and hot walk, and the search 

 among the fallen trunks and branches was very fatiguing, but 

 I was rewarded by obtaining about seventy distinct species 

 of beetles, of which at least a dozen were new to me, and 

 many others rare and interesting. I have never in my life 

 seen beetles so abundant as they were on this spot. Some 

 dozen species of good-sized golden Bupi'estidae, green rose- 

 chafers (Lomaptera), and long-horned weevils (Anthribidfe), 

 were so abundant that they rose up in swarms as I walked 

 along, filling the air with a loud buzzing hum. Along with 

 these, several fine longicorns were almost equally common, 

 forming such an assemblage as for once to realize that idea of 

 tropical luxuriance which one obtains by looking over the 

 drawers of a well-filled cabinet. On the under sides of the 

 trunks clung numbers of smaller or more sluggish longicorns, 

 while on the branches at the edge of the clearing others could 

 be detected sitting with outstretched antennae, ready to take 

 flight at the least alarm. It was a glorious spot, and one 

 which will always live in my memory as exhibiting the insect- 

 life of the tropics in unexampled luxuriance. For the three 

 following days I continued to visit this locality, adding each 

 time many new species to my collection, the following notes 

 of which may be interesting to entomologists. October 15th, 

 33 species of beetles ; 16th, 10 species ; l7th, 47 species ; 18th, 

 40 species; 19th, 56 species — in all about a hundi-ed species, 

 of which forty were new to me. There were forty-four species 

 of longicorns among them, and on the last day I took twenty- 

 eight species of longicorns, of which five were new to me. 



My boys were less fortunate in shooting. The only birds 



