xl 
FASCICULI MALAYENSES 
( Periophthalmus and Boleophthalmus ) on the mud flats exposed at low tide. An 
interesting series of these truly amphibious forms was obtained, and a number 
of the specimens have been found by Mr. J. Johnstone to belong to a new 
species, which he has named Periophthalmus phya. A few ethnographical 
specimens were obtained, as well as the skeleton of a murdered Malay. 
Cape Patani is a narrow sand spit, ranging in breadth from nearly a mile 
to a hundred yards or less, which stretches out to sea for ten miles from the 
south bank of the Jambu estuary. Its southern beach is exposed to the open 
sea (the Gulf of Siam), while it protects Pantani Roads to the north, at the 
same time rendering them liable to be silted up. 
No greater contrast could be imagined than that between the jungle on 
Bukit Besar and the vegetation on Cape Patani, for here we have no tropical 
luxuriance, except in the tiny thickets which surround the pools of water that 
well up in the broader parts through the sand, but either woods as open as 
those on the South Coast of England, or scenes as parched and dry as the 
sun-stricken deserts of Somaliland. In the casuarina woods, with their lawn- 
like glades, gnarled tree-trunks and absence of undergrowth or epiphytes, 
there is little to tell the eye that one is not in a northern pine-forest, while in 
the sandy wastes round the villages, so hot that a European cannot walk 
barefoot on the sand at midday, the hedges of spurge, Pandanus and prickly 
pear 1 recall a country far other than Malaya. 
As will be readily understood, the fauna of such a locality is peculiar and 
impoverished, though large numbers of cattle and sheep are pastured in the 
woods. Mammals, except otters and the two common monkeys, Presbytes 
obscurus and Macacus fascicularis , are rare ; we heard stories of an enormous 
red rat which lived among the hedges, but saw neither it nor the civet cat 
which inhabits the woods; squirrels especially are scarce. Of birds, several 
woodpeckers are common, and a little black-and-white tit is particularly 
characteristic ; the place of sea birds is largely taken by the fishing eagles, 
hawks and ospreys which nest in the highest casuarina trees, swarming on 
the beach wherever fishing operations are in progress. Towards the point, 
however, terns (Sterna sinensis and at least one other species) are fairly 
numerous, as is also a cormorant indistinguishable, except by its small size, from 
the common British species, while at the time of our visit (September and 
October, 1901), enormous numbers of plovers and sandpipers had just arrived 
on migration. The Malays who lived in the fishing villages on the Cape told 
us that, a little later, a bird they called burong lah paid them a visit of a few 
days in large flocks, and was captured for food with nets and snares. Their 
1. Of course introduced ; a species of Opuntia is now not uncommon in the dryer parts of Malaya. 
