cnAP. v.] 



HOW TO CATCH MOTHS. 



87 



never once able to make any collections at fill api)roaclimg 

 those at Sariwak, The reason of this I can pretty well 

 understand to be owing to the absence of some one or 

 other essential condition that were here aD combined. 

 Sometimes the dry season was the hiiidmnce; more fre- 

 quently residence in a town or village not close to margin 

 forest, and snrroimded by other houses whose lights were 

 a cDunter-attraction; still more frequently residence in a 

 dark paliu-tbatched house, with a lofty roof, in whose 

 recesses every moth was lost the instant it entered Tliis 

 last was the greatest drawback, and the real reason why I 

 never again was able to make a collection of moths ; for 

 I never afterwards lived in a solitary jungle-house with a 

 low boarded and whitewashed verandah, so constructed as 

 to prevent insects at once escaping into the upper part of 

 the house, quite out of reach. After my long experience, 

 my numerous foilureS; and my one success, I feel sure that 

 if any party of naturalists ever make a yacht-voyage to 

 explore the Mahiyan Archipelago, or any otlier tropical 

 region, making entomology one of their chief pursuits, it 

 would well repay them to caiTy a f^mall framed verandah, 

 or a verandah-sliaped tent of white canvas, to set up in 

 every favourable situation, as a means of making a col- 

 lection of nocturnal Lepidoptera, and also of obtaining rare 

 specimens of Coleoptera and other insects. I make the sug- 

 gestion here, because no one woidd suspeet the enormous 

 difference in results that such an apparatus would pro- 

 duce ; and because I consider it one of the curiosities of a 

 collector s experience to have found out that some such 

 apparatus is required. 



When I retiu-ned to Singapore T took with me the Malay 

 iad named Ali, who subsequently accompanied me all 

 over the Archipelago. Charles Allen preferred staying 

 at the Slission-house, and afterwards obtained employment 

 in Saniwak and in Singapore, till he again joined me four 

 ycAre later at Amboyna in the Moluccaa 



