'366 ' }FAIGIOU. [chap, xxxvi. 



holding up a bird, which he handed to me, saying with 

 great satisfaction, " ;N"ow I owe you nothing." These were 

 remarkable and quite unexpected instances of honesty 

 among savages, where it would have been very easy for 

 them to have been dishonest without fear of detection or 

 punishment. 



The country round about Bessir was very hilly and 

 rugged, bristling with jagged and honey-combed coral- 

 line rocks, and with curious little chasms and ravines. 

 The paths often passed through these rocky clefts, which 

 in the depths of the forest were gloomy and dark in the 

 extreme, and often full of fine-leaved herbaceous plants 

 and curious blue-foliaged Lycopodiaceae. It was in such 

 places as these that I obtained many of my most beau- 

 tiful small butterflies, such as Sospita statira and Taxila 

 pulchra, the gorgeous blue Amblypodia hercules, and many 

 others. On the skirts of the plantations I found the hand- 

 some blue Deudorix despcena, and in the shady woods the 

 lovely Lycsena wallacei. Here, too, I obtained the beau- 

 tiful Thyca aruna, of the richest orange on the upper side, 

 while below it is intense crimson and glossy black ; and 

 a superb specimen of a green Ornithoptera, absolutely 

 fresh and perfect, and which still remains one of the 

 glories of my cabinet. 



My collection of birds, though not very rich in number 



