170 
WALLACE ON THE ARRU ISLANDS. 
[Feb. 22 , 1858 . 
tion in trade, and the crowding together of a population of about a 
thousand in such a remote spot and so far removed from the civi- 
lised world, a degree of good feeling and charity is shown which 
I am very much afraid would not exist in an equally miscellaneous 
assemblage of Europeans for similar purposes. 
A few remarks on the climate will close this short notice of the 
Arru Islands. In most districts where the monsoon winds prevail, 
they regulate with more or less exactness the wet and dry seasons. 
In the south-western half of the archipelago, as far as Timor, Ma- 
cassar, and N. W. Borneo, the east monsoon is accompanied by dry 
weather, the west by almost continual rains. In N. E. Borneo 
(Labuan), however, the seasons are reversed ; the west monsoon, 
from about October or November to March or April, being accom- 
panied by dry weather, and this same rule prevails more or less 
over all the islands of the Molucca Sea. In Arru I was led to 
expect the same kind of seasons, and was therefore much surprised 
on arriving there in J anuary , which should have been the height of 
the dry weather, to experience during the whole month violent 
storms and almost daily rain. In February and the beginning of 
March it was finer, but still not a dry season, there being only 
periods of four or five fine hot days alternately with an equal 
quantity of wet, windy, and cloudy weather. The end of March 
and all the month of April were very fine. In April the winds 
began to be variable, and in May, when the east monsoon had regu- 
larly set in, the weather became wet and gusty, as in January, and 
this continued till we left in June. Both the natives and the 
traders assured me that the only regular dry season in Arru was a 
short one in October and November, during which months there is 
often no rain at all. This is just at the time of change from the 
east to the west monsoon, and from the dry to the wet season in the 
south-west parts of the Archipelago. This is only one of many 
anomalies in the climate of the various islands, an explanation of 
which cannot be given without more numerous and more accurate 
observations than have yet been made. 
Mr. J. Crawfurd, f.r.g.s., said he had never visited the islands, but he had 
written about them. The name was a matter of curiosity : it had no relation 
whatever to our word “ arrow ” or dart, but signified in the Malayan language 
the tree Casuarina muricata. The native inhabitants were a peculiar people. 
Mr. Wallace concluded they were negroes, similar to the negroes of New 
Guinea ; but he had seen them as more nearly resembling the inhabitants of 
the north of Australia. The population of the islands was very small, about 
80,000, giving about eight to the square mile. A bank ran along between 
the islands and New Guinea. Tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, pearls in small 
quantities, edible birds’-nests, and birds of paradise, constituted the chief 
wealth of the islands. The . birds’-nests were found in caves towards the 
