262 LLOYD'S NATURAL HISTORY. 



country, and as those are the only occasions on which 1 came 

 upon it during my long residence in Borneo, and as my nume- 

 rous native collectors never brought me specimens of it, I 

 imagine it must be a rare insect in the country in which Wal- 

 lace first discovered and captured it. 



"In 1878, on visiting 'Gopeng,' a village of miners in the 

 ' Kinta ' district of the State of Perak, in the Malay Peninsula, 

 I was very much delighted, as I descended from my elephant, 

 to see a fine specimen of this Butterfly settle in the most 

 leisurely and confident manner on a patch of black mud in 

 the middle of the village street, and quite close to me On the 

 following morning, as I walked through the valley in which the 

 open pits of the tin miners were excavated, the beautiful 

 creatures were flying about in all directions, as many as six or 

 seven being visible at a time. Their flight was straight, rather 

 slow, and heavy, very different from that I had seen on Kina 

 Balu. It flew generally about ten feet above the ground, to 

 which it frequently descended, resting on damp spots. It was 

 easily caught, and at my request my people secured a great 

 many specimens for the museum at Singapore, by knocking 

 them over with their cotton jackets and waist-cloths taken off for 

 the purpose. At one place I noticed a great number of the 

 wings of the Ornithoptera lying round a saturated piece of plank 

 close to a little rill of water near a Chinese gardener's hut, and, 

 passing the spot shortly afterwards, I saw a cat of the ' knotted 

 tailed ' race peculiar to Malaya watching for the Butterflies as 

 they settled on the end of the plank nearest to the water, and 

 catching them most deftly with its paws. It ate the body of 

 the one I saw it catch, leaving the beautiful wings to be strewn 

 by the wind on the surface of the ground around its breakfast 

 table. I ascertained that the plank was used by the Chinese 

 occupants of the hut for cutting up and cleaning their fish and 

 pork, and as it was saturated with moisture and the juices of 



