354 MY LIFE 



the year, and everywhere, except far in the interior, they 

 are dear. The plantains and bananas even are poor, like the 

 worst sorts in South America. 



" May ioth. — The ship for which I have been waiting 

 nearly three months is in at last, and in about a week I hope 

 to be off for Macassar. The monsoon, however, is against 

 us, and we shall probably have a long passage, perhaps forty 

 days. Celebes is quite as unknown as was the Upper 

 Amazon before your visit to it, perhaps even more so. In 

 the British Museum catalogues of Cetoniidse, Buprestida?, 

 Longicorns, and Papilionidas, not a single specimen is recorded 

 from Celebes, and very few from the Moluccas ; but the fine 

 large species described by the old naturalists, some of which 

 have recently been obtained by Madame Reiffer, give promise 

 of what systematic collection may produce." 



Before giving a general sketch of my life and work in less 

 known parts of the Archipelago, I must refer to an article I 

 wrote while in Sarawak, which formed my first contribution 

 to the great question of the origin of species. It was written 

 during the wet season, while I was staying in a little house 

 at the mouth of the Sarawak river, at the foot of the Santu- 

 bong mountain. I was quite alone, with one Malay boy as 

 cook, and during the evenings and wet days I had nothing to 

 do but to look over my books and ponder over the problem 

 which was rarely absent from my thoughts. Having always 

 been interested in the geographical distribution of animals 

 and plants, having studied Swainson and Humboldt, and 

 having now myself a vivid impression of the fundamental 

 differences between the Eastern and Western tropics; and 

 having also read through such books as Bonaparte's " Con- 

 spectus," already referred to, and several catalogues of insects 

 and reptiles in the British Museum (which I almost knew by 

 heart), giving a mass of facts as to the distribution of animals 

 over the whole world, it occurred to me that these facts had 

 never been properly utilized as indications of the way in 

 which species had come into existence. The great work of 

 Lyell had furnished me with the main features of the succes- 



