xxii] CELEBES, THE MOLUCCAS, ETC. 369 



are less fitted to get rich, if they did try, than myself." 

 The rest of the letter is devoted to new discoveries in 

 photography and allied subjects. 



I left Ternate by the Dutch mail steamer on May 1, 

 1859, calling at Amboyna and spending two days at Banda, 

 where I visited the celebrated nutmeg plantations, reaching 

 Coupang, at the west end of Timor, on the 13th. The country 

 round proving almost a desert for a collector, I went to the 

 small island of Semau, where I obtained a few birds, but 

 little else. I therefore returned to Coupang after a week 

 and determined to go back the way I came by Amboyna 

 and Ternate to Menado, in order to lose no time, and arrived 

 there on June 10. Here I remained for four months in one 

 of the most interesting districts in the whole archipelago. I 

 visited several localities in the interior, and obtained a 

 number of the rare and peculiar species of birds and a con- 

 siderable collection of beetles and butterflies, mostly rare or 

 new, but by no means so numerous as I had obtained in 

 other good localities. 



In October I returned to Amboyna in order to visit the 

 almost unknown island of Ceram, which, however, I found 

 very unproductive and unhealthy. While there I wrote a 

 short letter to Bates, congratulating him on his safe return 

 to England, discussing great schemes for the writing and 

 publication of works on our respective collections, adding, 

 ■ I have sent a paper lately to the Linnean Society which 

 gives my views of the principles of geographical distribu- 

 tion in the archipelago, of which I hope some day to work 

 out the details." 1 



In December, being almost starved, I returned to Amboyna 

 to recruit, and in February started on another journey to 

 Ceram, with the intention, if possible, of again reaching the 

 Ke Islands, which I had found so rich during the few days I 

 stayed there on my voyage to the Aru Islands. I visited 

 several places on the coast of Ceram, and spent three days 

 very near its centre, where a very rough mountain path 



1 The title of this paper was "On the Zoological Geography of Malay 

 Archipelago," and it was published in i860. 



VOL. I. 2 B 



