LO MALAYAN ORNITHOLOGY. 
without a library close at hand, about to take up the study of 
Malay birds, I have put down my experiences, however slight, 
about each species I met with, at the same time adding details 
which, with very few exceptions, have been taken from my own 
specimens before they were skinned. 
Regarding the Malay Peninsula in an ornithological point of 
view, the range of mountains running down the middle of the 
country may be said to divide it into two divisions—the Western 
or Indo-Malayan, where the avifauna has much in common with 
that of India and Ceylon, and, on the other hand, the Eastern, 
of which the ornithology shows a strong relationship with that 
of China, Borneo, and the Eastern Archipelago. 
My observations are confined entirely to the Indo-Malayan divi- 
sion, and, though extending over a period of nearly three years’ 
continuous and most essentially practical work, are necessarily of 
a fragmentary and incomplete nature, as, in a country so rich in 
birds, there must be many species of which I know but little: 
several I never even saw. | 
During a good deal of my time in the country, I was stationed 
with my regiment at Singapore, in itself by no means a bad collect- 
ing-ground, while from it I made many bird-hunting expeditions 
to the mainland, visiting Malacca, Penang, Province Wellesley, 
Johor, the Moar river, and many islands of the Singapore 
Archipelago. 
My first seven months were passed in the native States of Pérak 
and Larut; and during that time I personally obtained examples 
of over two hundred different species, though, if I had but had 
an assistant to help in the skinning, I could have collected many 
more. Often, after a hard day’s shooting, I had far more on hand 
than I could possibly manage, particularly in that hot, damp 
climate, where, in spite of carbolic acid, nothing would keep for 
any length of time. Nor must I forget to mention those mortal 
enemies to the naturalist—the ants ; for, though I stood the legs of 
iny tables in oil-jars, hung my boxes to strings passed through 
bottles of water, used any amount of camphor, and tried every 
ingenious precaution that man could devise against their attacks, 
I haye to thank them for the loss of many a specimen. 
