CELEBES, THE MOLUCCAS, ETC. 369 



I left Ternate by the Dutch mail steamer on May 1, 1859, 

 calling at Amboyna and spending two days at Banda, where 

 I visited the celebrated nutmeg plantations, reaching Coupang, 

 at the west end of Timor, on the 13th. The country round 

 proving almost a desert for a collector, I went to the small 

 island of Semau, where I obtained a few birds, but little else. 

 I therefore returned to Coupang after a week and deter- 

 mined to go back the way I came by Amboyna and Ternate 

 to Menado, in order to lose no time, and arrived there on June 

 10. Here I remained for four months in one of the most 

 interesting districts in the whole archipelago. I visited several 

 localities in the interior, and obtained a number of the rare 

 and peculiar species of birds and a considerable collection 

 of beetles and butterflies, mostly rare or new, but by no means 

 so numerous as I had obtained in other good localities. 



In October I returned to Amboyna in order to visit the 

 almost unknown island of Ceram, which, however, I found 

 very unproductive and unhealthy. While there I wrote a 

 short letter to Bates, congratulating him on his safe return 

 to England, discussing great schemes for the writing and 

 publication of works on our respective collections, adding, 

 " I have sent a paper lately to the Linnaean Society which 

 gives my views of the principles of geographical distribution 

 in the archipelago, of which I hope some day to work out 

 the details." 1 



In December, being almost starved, I returned to Amboyna 

 to recruit, and in February started on another journey to 

 Ceram, with the intention, if possible, of again reaching the 

 Ke Islands, which I had found so rich during the few days I 

 stayed there on my voyage to the Aru Islands. I visited 

 several places on the coast of Ceram, and spent three days 

 very near its centre, where a very rough mountain path 

 crosses from the south to the north coast. But never in the 

 whole of my tropical wanderings have I found a luxuriant 

 forest so utterly barren of almost every form of animal life. 

 Though I had three guns out daily, I did not get a single 



1 The title of this paper was, " On the Zoological Geography of 

 Malay Archipelago," and it was published in i860. 



