328 MY LIFE 



examining the collections, and making notes and sketches, 

 of the rarer and more valuable species of birds, butterflies, 

 and beetles of the various Malay islands. 



Among the greatest wants of a collector who wishes to 

 know what he is doing, and how many of his captures are 

 new or rare, are books containing a compact summary with 

 brief descriptions of all the more important known species ; 

 and, speaking broadly, such books did not then nor do now 

 exist. Having found by my experience when beginning botany 

 how useful are even the shortest characters in determining 

 a great number of species, I endeavoured to do the same 

 thing in this case. I purchased the " Conspectus Generum 

 Avium " of Prince Lucien Bonaparte, a large octavo volume 

 of 800 pages, containing a well-arranged catalogue of all the 

 known species of birds up to 1850, with references to descrip- 

 tions and figures, and the native country and distribution 

 of each species. Besides this, in a very large number — I 

 should think nearly half — a short but excellent Latin descrip- 

 tion was given, by which the species could be easily deter- 

 mined. In many families (the cuckoos and woodpeckers, for 

 example) every species was thus described, in others a large 

 proportion. As the book had very wide margins I consulted 

 all the books referred to for the Malayan species, and copied 

 out in abbreviated form such of the characters as I thought 

 would enable me to determine each, the result being that 

 during my whole eight years' collecting in the East, I could 

 almost always identify every bird already described, and if 

 I could not do so, was pretty sure that it was a new or un- 

 described species. 



No one who is not a naturalist and collector can imagine 

 the value of this book to me. It was my constant companion 

 on all my journeys, and as I had also noted in it the species 

 not in the British Museum, I was able every evening to 

 satisfy myself whether among my day's captures there was 

 anything either new or rare. Now, such a book is equally 

 valuable to the amateur collector at home in naming and 

 arranging his collections, but to answer the purpose thoroughly 

 it must, of course, be complete — that is, every species must be 



