A Day's Beetle-Catching. 513 



I was searching out the best localities, I took about 30 dif- 

 ferent kinds of beetles a day, besides about half that number 

 of butterflies, and a few of the other orders. But afterward, 

 up to the very last week, I averaged 49 species a day. On 

 the 31st of May, I took 78 distinct sorts, a larger number than 



1 had ever captured before, principally obtained among dead 

 trees and under rotten bark. A good long walk on a fine day 

 up the hill, and to the plantations of the natives, capturing 

 every thing not very common that came in my way, would 

 produce about 60 species; but on the last day of June I 

 brought home no less than 95 distinct kinds of beetles, a 

 larger number than I ever obtained in one day before or since. 

 It was a fine hot day, and I devoted it to a search among dead 

 leaves, beating foliage, and hunting under rotten bark, in all 

 the best stations I had discovered during my walks. I was 

 out from ten in the morning till three in the afternoon, and it 

 took me six hours' work at home to pin and set out all the 

 specimens, and to separate the species. Although I had al- 

 ready been working this spot daily for two months and a half, 

 and had obtained over 800 species of Coleoptera, this day's 

 work added 32 new ones. Among these were 4 Longicorns, 



2 Carabidae, 7 Staphylinidoe, 7 Curculionida?, 2 Copridse, 4 

 Chrysomelidse, 3 Heteromera, 1 Elater, and 1 Buprestis. 

 Even on the last day I went out, I obtained 16 new species; 

 so that although I collected over a thousand distinct sorts of 

 beetles in a space not much exceeding a square mile during 

 the three months of my residence at Dorey, I can not believe 

 that this represents one-half the species really inhabiting the 

 same spot, or a fourth of what might be obtained in an ai-ea 

 extending twenty miles in each direction. 



On the 2 2d of July the schooner Hester Helena arrived, and 

 five days afterward we bade adieu to Dorey, without much re- 

 gret, for in no place which I have visited have I encountered 

 more privations and annoyances. Continual rain, continual 

 sickness, little wholesome food, with a plague of ants and flies, 

 surpassing any thing I had before met with, required all a 

 naturalist's ardor to encounter; and when they were uncom- 

 pensated by great success in collecting, became all the more 

 insupportable. This long-though t-of and much-desired voyage 

 to New Guinea had realized none of my expectations. Instead 



Kk 



