232 



JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). 



[Vol. XIX. 



I hope that what I have been able to tell you has awakened 

 or indeed increased your legitimate interest in and appre- 

 ciation of the exhibited works. I think I may for to-day 

 leave this portion of our subject with almost the same words 

 with which I ended a more cursory discussion of the plates at 

 a meeting of the Ned. Ornith. Vereeniging : Assuredly it 

 must be acknowledged that both the artist ' ' by the gift of 

 God" de Bevere, as well as Loten, who got him to paint the 

 plates, added his notes to them, and brought them under the 

 notice of men of science, have gained for themselves a peculiar 

 merit in connection with the study of natural history in the 

 tropical regions." 



Section II. 



Thinking that some readers of my address at the annual 

 meeting of the Council of the Museum in 1905, printed in the 

 Indische Mercuur of 6th June 1905, may possibly take suffi- 

 cient interest therein as to wish to know something more 

 regarding the two naturalists mentioned and their work, I 

 give below some additional particulars with which further 

 investigation has supplied me, and which on various points 

 supplement what was then said at Haarlem. 



Regarding the artist de Bevere himself I have not succeeded 

 in finding anything additional, though, on the other hand, 

 something regarding his Dutch grandfather, the Major de 

 Bevere mentioned by Loten ; namely, we find entered in A. J. 

 van der Aa's Biographisch Woordenboek, 8th edition of 1854, 

 vol. ii., pt. 2, on p. 488 : " Willem Hendrik de Beveren, cap- 

 tain in the service of the E. I. Company," and, on the author- 

 ity of Fr. Valentyn's Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indie, vol. iv. , pt. 1 , 

 pp. 162 and 168-200,* mention made of his military services 

 in 1706, during the war in Java against Soeropati, in which, 

 led on by his " indomitable courage," he ventured too far into 

 the enemy's territory and suffered a defeat, in consequence 

 of which he was summoned before the court-martial and 



* These figures are taken from Valentyn's index, which is very 

 defective and sometimes incorrect. See the figures in the footnotes 

 further on. 



