314 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
some of the islands in the Malay Archipelago, there is yet very 
much to be done in the way of exploring and collecting there 
before our knowledge on the subject can be considered as any- 
thing like complete. A valuable contribution thereto has been 
recently published by Mr. H. O. Forbes in the shape of a 
narrative of five years’ wanderings in Java, Sumatra, the Cocos 
Keeling Islands, and Timor Laut; and, as might be expected, 
this narrative is full of interest for naturalists. 
Proceeding first to Java he made Batavia his head-quarters, 
whence all necessary supplies could be procured, and his 
collections stored at the end of every expedition. After a brief 
stay here, which carried him over the worst part of the rainy 
season, he started early in 1879 for the Cocos Keeling Islands, 
in order, as he tells us, to form, by personal observation, more 
clear ideas of coral formation, and chiefly to note how the 
struggle between the reef-makers and the waves had been going 
on since the date of Darwin’s visit there in 1836, when he made 
the observations subsequently published in his ‘ Coral Reefs.’ 
Returning thence to Batavia, he started soon after for 
Genteng, in the province of Bantam, where he spent some 
time in collecting; afterwards proceeding to Kosala, whence, 
after some months’ absence, he returned to Batavia to pack up 
and send home his first collections. This accomplished, he 
began to look further afield, and in November, 1880, embarked 
for Telong Betong, the chief town of the Lampong Residency, 
which forms the most southerly province of Sumatra, steaming 
westward through the Thousand Islands into the Straits of 
Sunda, and so into Lampong Bay. 
After a brief sojourn in the south-coast district of the 
Lampongs, once more he returned to Batavia to despatch 
collections, and again entered Southern Sumatra to explore the 
dense forests which clothe the great mountain chain extending 
through the Residency of Lampong, beyond that of Palembang. 
Here a year was adventurously and profitably spent, and it was 
not until the middle of April, 1882, that he once more left his 
head-quarters at Batavia, vid Amboina, for Timor Laut, full of 
great expectations in regard to a group of islands of whose 
fauna and flora he was to give the first published account. The 
exploration of these islands, not unattended with danger and 
difficulty, occupied the remainder of the year 1882, when, after 
