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Natural-History Collectors. 



they went two days 1 journey into the interior without reaching the 

 place where the birds are actually obtained ; this was reported to be 

 much further, over two more ranges of mountains. The skins pass 

 from village to village till they reach the coast, where the Dorey men 

 buy them and sell to any trading vessels. Not one of the birds Les- 

 son bought at Dorey was killed there ; they came from a circuit of 

 two hundred or three hundred miles. My only hope lies now in 

 Waigiou, where I shall probably go next year, and try for P. rubra 

 and P. superba. Even of P. papuana 1 have not got many, as my 

 boys had to shoot them all themselves ; I got nothing from the natives 

 at Dorey. You will ask why I did not try somewhere else when 1 found 

 Dorey so bad : the simple answer is, that on the whole mainland of 

 New Guinea there is no other place where my life would be safe a 

 week : it is a horribly wild country ; you have no idea of the difficulties 

 in the way of a single person doing anything in it. There are a few 

 good birds at Dorey, but full half the species are the same as at Aru, 

 and there is much less variety ! My best things are some new and 

 rare lories. 



In insects, again, you will be astonished at the mingled poverty and 

 riches : butterflies are very scarce ; scarcely any Ly cenidae or Pieridae, 

 and most of the larger things the same as at Aru. Of the Ornithoptera 

 I could not get a single male at Dorey, and only two or three females ; 

 I got two from Amberbaki and two from the south coast of New 

 Guinea, from the Dutch exploring ship. Of Coleoptera I have taken 

 twice as many species as at Aru ; in fact, I have never got so many 

 species in the same time ; yet there is hardly anything fine : no Lo- 

 mopterae, — in fact, not one duplicate Cetonia of any kind, and only 

 two solitary specimens of common small species ! No Lucani ! 

 perhaps nowhere in the world are Lamellicornes so scarce, — only 

 fourteen out of 1040 Coleoptera, and most of them small and unique 

 specimens. Of Longicornes there are full as many as at Aru ; many 

 the same, but a good number of new and interesting species. Curcu- 

 lionidae very rich ; some remarkable things, and the beautiful 

 Eupholus Schcenherri and E. Cuvieri ; the former rather abundant. 

 There is a very pretty lot of Cicindelidae ; two Cicindelas and three 

 Therates will probably be new to the English collections ; they are 

 C. funerata, Bois., a very pretty species, with a peculiar aspect; 

 C. d'Urvillei ; also a small new species, near C. funerata, very scarce. 

 Therates basalis, Dej., a very pretty species, I have sent a good many 

 of; T. festival Dup. (I think), a pretty brilliant little species, not 

 common, and another of the same size, and, I think, quite new, rufous 



