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ME. A. E. WALLACE ON INDIAN ETC. 



ill health, and had lost the excitement of novelty which had 

 spurred me on during my stay at Aru. My collections there- 

 fore must not be taken to represent the comparative richness of 

 these localities, which I believe to be all equally prolific in insect 

 life. At the Aru Islands I collected for six months (January to 

 June 1857), at Dorey three months (April to June 1858), and 

 in Waigiou eleven weeks (July to September 1860). At Mysol, 

 my assistant, Mr. Allen, collected for more than six months in 

 1860. The large island of Timor yielded me very few insects, 

 although at different times I spent about five months there, vi- 

 siting both the eastern and western districts. The climate is 

 very arid, and the vegetation scanty, consisting chiefly of Euca- 

 lypti and Acacias ; and it much resembles Australia in its physical 

 features. It does not present, however, any of the fine Austra- 

 lian forms of insects, while many of those characteristic of the 

 other islands of the archipelago seem absent. Ill health during 

 my residence there prevented me from making any thing like 

 a complete collection ; and it is probable that in Hymeno- 

 ptera, at all events, much remains to be done in this island. 

 Mr. Allen spent some months in Flores, which he found very 

 similar in character to Timor and equally unproductive of insects. 

 My stay in the large islands of Java and Sumatra was much too 

 short to enable me to make any collections that would give a 

 fair idea of their entomology. They are, however, both exces- 

 cessively rich, and teem with insect life ; yet how little they have 

 yet been explored by entomologists may be estimated from the 

 fact that in 1863 Mr. Smith could only find 45 species of Acu- 

 leate Hymen optera which were known to inhabit Java ! I be- 

 lieve that an active collector could, in two or three years, collect 

 fully ten times that number in Java alone ; and Sumatra is, no 

 doubt, equally rich. 



Even the best collections I have been able to make can only be 

 looked upon as samples of the productions of these luxuriant 

 regions. A traveller can do no more than test the productiveness 

 of a country ; and we shall never know all the riches of the eastern 

 forests till some assiduous entomologist has devoted several 

 years to a single island. It is greatly to be regretted that, 

 among the numerous Europeans residing in the most fertile 

 parts of the tropics, there are few or none who have devoted 

 themselves in earnest to the exhaustive study of the entomology 

 of their district. 



