ECAN KUDU OR HORSE FISH. 373 



" Yesterday," (Friday,) said my amusing 

 Malay informant, " I washed this bird, (the one 

 then before us,) and gave him his physic." He 

 was so highly pleased at my taking an interest 

 in his birds, that he presented me with a pair of 

 the cream-coloured doves, which, he observed, 

 " Would speak like a clock, every hour."* The 

 smaller species was the one, however, possessed 

 of the preserving qualities against fire and flood. 

 He apologized for not making me a present of 

 it, and gave, m my opinion, the best of reasons 

 that a married man could, which was — " Ms wife 

 would not let Mm 'part with it.'' 



I, however, so pleased my Malay friend, that 

 he regretted I was about to leave Batavia so 

 soon, as he would otherwise have shown me 

 some more curiosities, and given me plenty of 

 information on Javanese things, (probably, I 

 thought, of a similar stamp to the foregoing, that 

 is, more amusing than instructive). He brought 

 me a dried specimen of the Hippocampus, care- 

 fully wrapped in paper ; it was named Ecan 

 Kudu, or horse-fish, (Ecan, signifying a fish, 

 and Kudu, horse,) by the Malays, from its 



* These doves when on board cooed, or, as the Malay said, 

 talked when the bells were struck, but as frequently cooed or 

 spoke out of the regular time, so they did not answer the pur- 

 pose of a clock 1 



