1881 .] 
243 
butterflies I bad seen ! An hour’s sojourn beside a gorse bush on 
Hampstead Heath would have afforded more — and brighter coloured 
— specimens than this ! 
As for birds, Narseer and his brother, whose fame has been 
celebrated by Mr. Sharpe, and their boys, over a space of twenty 
days did not average more than two birds each a day ; and yet the 
result when sent home has, I daresay, caused the casual observer to 
exclaim : “ AY hat au abundance of beautiful birds there must be in 
those parts !” 
I do not know whether I am specially unfortunate, but once, and 
once only, in all my travels, did I see butterflies in anything like that 
profusion that most zoological travellers seem to consider the usual 
thing : it was in the centre of the Malay peninsula, at a place called 
Chindrass, a road had been made across a marsh, and at a rather damp 
place, the ground was simply covered with butterflies, busy sucking at 
the moisture ; there were not many species, but the number of speci- 
mens was something enormous, the commonest was an orange-coloured, 
elongate-winged Pieris and a Papilio , closely allied to P. PJiada- 
manthus, was also in large numbers ; looking over the lot I picked out 
a Charaxes as a desideratum, and, on popping the net over it, took 
about a dozen of the common Pieris as well, while a whole cloud rose 
into the air. 
In one of these papers I have mentioned* notice is taken of the 
apparent scarcity of caterpillars in the Tropics ; this is quite true, the 
same thing has struck me : beat, sweep, or look where you will, there 
are none to be found, but they are not far off all the same, for, plant 
vegetables on any newly-reclaimed piece of ground, and you will have 
the greatest difficulty in preventing their being destroyed by swarms 
of larvae. A\ r e must fall back upon Darwin for the reason, I suppose ; 
it is only those larvae that are peculiarly gifted with modes of conceal- 
ment that have any chance of surviving the continual search made 
after them by numerous enemies. Large quantities of larvae entail 
large quantities of moths, and large quantities there are in some more 
favoured localities ; in a very new clearing, where butterflies are 
almost absent, moths are usually very abundant, and this I ascribe to 
the bats, like the butterflies, not yet having found their way there ; 
when first I opened up the jungle down here, the floor of the house 
was absolutely littered of a morning by the quantities of moths’-wings 
lying about ; attracted from underneath the forest cover by the light, 
they had flow'll into the house which then had no window's or doors, 
* Mr. Kirby’s Translation of M. C. Pieper’s remarks on the habits of butterflies in the East 
Indian Islands. 
