188 THE KE ISLANDS. [chap. xxix. 



a native's tobacco pouch. It was quite a new species, and 

 had not been found elsewhere than on this little island. 

 It is one of the Buprestidse, and has been named Cypho- 

 gastra calejjyga. 



Each morning after an early breakfast I wandered by 

 myself into the forest, where I found delightful occupation 

 in capturing the large and handsome butterflies, which 

 were tolerably abundant, and most of them new to me ; 

 for I was now upon the confines of the Moluccas and New 

 Guinea,^a region the productions of which were then 

 among the most precious and rare in the cabinets of 

 Europe. Here my eyes were feasted for the first time with 

 splendid scarlet lories on the wing, as well as by the sight 

 of that most imperial butterfly, the "Priamus" of col- 

 lectors, or a closely allied species, but flying so high that I 

 did not succeed in capturing a specimen. One of them 

 was brought me in a bamboo, boxed up with a lot of 

 beetles, and of course torn to pieces. The principal draw- 

 back of the place for a collector is the want of good paths, 

 and the dreadfully rugged character of the surface, re- 

 quiring the attention to be so continually directed to 

 securing a footing, as to make it very difficult to capture 

 active winged things, who pass out of reach while one is 

 glancing to see that the next step may not plunge one into 

 a chasm or over a precipice. Another inconvenience is 

 that there are no running streams, the rock being of so 



