CHAP. XXIV.] A GOOD BOTANICAL LOCALITY. 63 



grow it in sufficient quantity, and did not persevere suffi- 

 ciently long. 



Batchian is an island that would perhaps repay the 

 researches of a botanist better than any other in the 

 whole Archipelago. It contains a great variety of sur- 

 face and of soil, abundance of large and small streams, 

 many of which are navigable for some distance, and there 

 being no savage inhabitants, every part of it can be visited 

 with perfect safety. It possesses gold, copper, and coal, 

 hot springs and geysers, sedimentary and volcanic rocks 

 and coralline limestone, alluvial plains, abrupt hills and 

 lofty mountains, a moist climate, and a grand and luxuriant 

 forest vegetation. 



The few days I stayed here produced me several new 

 insects, but scarcely any birds. Butterflies and birds are 

 in fact remarkably scarce in these forests. One may walk 

 a whole day and not see more than two or three species of 

 either. In everything but beetles, these eastern islands 

 are very deficient compared with the western (Java, 

 Borneo, &c.), and much more so if compared with the 

 forests of South America, where twenty or thirty species 

 of butterflies may be caught every day, and on very good 

 days a hundred, a number we can hardly reach here in 

 months of unremitting search. In birds there is the same 

 difference. In most parts of tropical America we may 

 always find some species of woodpecker tanager, biish- 



