SPOLIA NEMORIS. Ve 
Spolia Nemoris, 
By 
A. A. W. Hubrecht, LL.D., C.M.Z.S., 
Professor of Zoology in the University of Utrecht. 
With Plates 9—12. 
Ir was in the summer of 1889 that an invitation reached me, 
coming from the Royal Physical Society (Koninklijke Natuur- 
kundige Vereeniging) in Batavia, to undertake a trip to the 
Indian Archipelago for purposes of scientific research. This 
invitation opened the prospect of realisation of a wish long 
cherished and for a naturalist not exorbitant,—the wish to have 
a direct glimpse and a personal impression of animal and 
vegetable life in the tropics. And so it was accepted with 
alacrity. 
Now that I am going to give a summary account of my 
investigations during this temporary sojourn in India, the 
results of which are gradually taking a shape that will permit 
of their successive publication, I cannot refrain from expressing 
my grateful indebtedness to the above-named Society and to its 
Council. Although the funds that were required for these 
researches have been granted by the Government, to whom I 
am for that reason equally indebted, still it was the Society 
who transferred the responsibility for the way in which the 
money was to be spent entirely to me, with what I would be 
inclined to call a blind confidence. 
In consequence of this I was quite free in the choice of any 
research I might wish to undertake, and also in the method 
