392 > BouRU. 



During the whole of my stay, however, insects never be- 

 came plentiful. My clearing produced me a few fine longi- 

 corns and Buprestidse, diiferent from any I had before seen, 

 together with several of the Amboyna species, but by no 

 means so numerous or so beautiful as I had found in that 

 small island. For example, I collected only 210 different 

 kinds of beetles during my two months' stay at Bouru, while 

 in three weeks at Amboyna, in 1857, I found more than 300 

 species. One of the finest insects found at Bouru was a large 

 Cerambyx, of a deep shining chestnut color, and with very long 

 antennae. It varied greatly in size, the largest specimens be- 

 ing three inches long, while the smallest were only an inch, 

 the antennse varying from one and a half to five inches. 



One day my boy Ali came home with a story of a big 

 snake. He was walking through some high grass, and step- 

 ped on something which he took for a small fallen tree, but 

 it felt cold and yielding to his feet, and far to the right and 

 left there was a waving and rustling of the herbage. He 

 jumped back in afiTright and j^repared to shoot, but could 

 not get a good view of the creature, and it passed away, he 

 said, like a tree being dragged along through the grass. As 

 he had several times already shot large snakes, which he de- 

 clared were all as nothing comj)ared with this, I am inclined 

 to believe it must really have been a monster. Such crea- 

 tures are rather plentiful here, for a man living close by 

 showed me on his thigh the marks where he had been seized 

 by one close to his house. It was big enough to take the 

 man's thigh in its mouth, and he would probably liave been 

 killed and devoured by it had not his cries brought out his 

 neighbors, who destroyed it with their choppers. As far as 

 I could make out, it was about twenty feet long, but All's 

 was probably much larger. 



It sometimes amuses me to observe how, a few days after I 

 have taken possession of it, a native hut seems quite a com- 

 fortable home. My house at Waypoti was a bare shed, with 

 a large bamboo platform at one side. At one end of this plat- 

 form, which was elevated about three feet, I fixed up my mos- 

 quito curtain, and partly inclosed it with a large Scotch plaid, 

 making a comfortable little sleeping apartment. I put up a 

 rude table on legs buried in the earthern floor, and had my 



