46 EXPEDITION INTO INTERIOR OF SUMATRA, 
than 500 objects, almost the whole of which have been repro- 
duced in the 3rd part of our work. We trust that they will 
give a true idea of the life and customs of the Malays, set 
forth as they are in thirteen chapters of our ethnographical 
description. In my linguistic researches, I set myself as - 
much as possible to note words and to collect manuscripts. 
As to these latter, I frequently had them read and ex- 
plained to me, in order to learn the real meaning and the 
proper pronunciation of words. The difficulties I had to 
overcome will be evident to all those who will take the trou- 
ble to examine the word-lsts of the Rawas and Lebong 
(known as the Redjang) dialects, and the songs, puzzles and 
proverbs which I gathered from the lips of the people themselves, 
as well as the Manangkabo, Mouroi-Batou and Touankou- 
nan Tjeredeg manuscripts. Besides, I was fortunate enough 
to gather complete information about the figure-characters 
of the Rentjoung as well as the method of spelling and 
writing them. 
This figure-writing owes itsname to the manner in which 
the words are engraved with the point of a knife upon strips 
of bamboo. 
I was, on several occasions, able to gather interesting in- 
formation with regard to the aborigines of this part of the 
country—the Koubous—and I am in a position to state this 
curious fact, viz., that their language, which at the first 
elance appears to differ entirely from Malay, appears on 
closer investigation to be almost the same laneuage as that 
of the Malays who inhabit the Koubou district. Only, the 
pronunciation of the Koubous is harsher, and their peculiari- 
ty of expression takes the form of a dialect. 
We were lucky enough to obtain some valuable botani- 
cal specimens, and some other fortunate finds go to show 
that our researches were not altogether fruitless. But most 
remarkable of all were the results of our zoological investiga- 
tions. We brought back 30 mammals, 285 birds, 173 reptiles 
and amphibians, 385 fish, 5 to 6 thousand insects, including 
323 species of lepidoptera, and a large number of molluses.* 
* The greater part of this collection is now in the Royal Museum of 
Natural History at Leyden. 
