CELEBES, THE MOLUCCAS, ETC. 379 



" I am here making what I intend to be my last collections, 

 but am doing very little in insects, as it is the wet season and 

 all seems dead. I find in those districts where the seasons 

 are strongly contrasted the good collecting time is very 

 limited — only about a month or two at the beginning of the 

 dry, and a few weeks at the commencement of the rains. It 

 is now two years since I have been able to get any beetles, 

 owing to bad localities and bad weather, so I am becoming 

 disgusted. When I do find a good place it is generally very 

 good, but such are dreadfully scarce. In Java I had to go 

 forty miles in the eastern part and sixty miles in the western 

 to reach a bit of forest, and then I got scarcely anything. 

 Here I had to come a hundred miles inland, by Palembang, 

 and though in the very centre of Eastern Sumatra, the forest 

 is only in patches, and it is the height of the rains, so I get 

 nothing. A Longicorn is a rarity, and I suppose I shall not 

 have as many species in two months as I have obtained in 

 three or four days in a really good locality. I am getting, 

 however, some sweet little blue butterflies (Lyccenida) , which 

 is the only thing that keeps up my spirits." 



The letter to my friend Silk will be, perhaps, a little more 

 amusing, and perhaps not less instructive. 



" Lobo Roman, Sumatra, December 22, 1861. 



" My Dear George, 



" Between eight and nine years ago, when we were 

 concocting that absurd book, ' Travels on the Amazon and 

 Rio Negro,' you gave me this identical piece of waste paper 

 with sundry others, and now having scribbled away my last 

 sheet of ' hot-pressed writing,' and being just sixty miles 

 from another, I send you back your gift, with interest ; so 

 you see that a good action, sooner or later, finds its sure 

 reward. 



" I now write you a letter, I hope for the last time, for I 

 trust our future letters may be viva voce, as an Irishman 

 would say, while our epistolary correspondence will be con- 

 fined to notes. I really do now think and believe that I am 



