130 A NATURALIST IN CANNIBAL LAND 



measles a Kanaka and a New Guinea boy with 

 myself alone escaping. 



I made a resolute effort to nurse my boys back to 

 health, for the collecting was promising to be sensa- 

 tional. The day the measles broke out, some of the 

 natives of the district who were collecting for me had 

 brought in the butterfly which I took at first to 

 be the Troides goliath, but which on examination 

 proved to be an entirely new species, which has 

 been called the Troides chimcera. It was a female 

 specimen. (Among the Troides the females are 

 almost the same in colour, but the males differ very 

 widely.) In this particular butterfly the female has 

 a hairy body, probably because of the intense cold of 

 the mountains in which she has her habitat. No 

 other species of Troides or Ornithoptera that I know 

 of has a hairy body. 



It was particularly vexing to me that just after this 

 important discovery, and whilst the collecting generally 

 was so very promising, I had to face the alternative 

 of staying where I was, and thus almost certainly 

 sacrificing the lives of my boys, or of returning to the 

 coast. One by one the sufferers from measles con- 

 tracted pneumonia. As each one fell ill I had him 

 isolated in a hospital tent, in the effort to prevent the 

 spread of the disease. But all was in vain, and at 

 last I had all who had suffered from measles very ill 

 with pneumonia. 



It was truly pitiable to hear the laboured breathing 



