macrurus) is one of the most familiar sounds during moonlight
nights. At daybreak the chatter of the Java sparrows
assures one of its being high time to rise. Cuming’s
mound bird (Megapodius Cumingi) is found in Labuan,
but is more common on the islets of Kuraman, where its
nests are met with in mounds of earth, three to four feet
in height, and twelve feet in circumference.
Even the Nicobar pigeon visits this island; and a
solitary hoopoo was shot there during my visit. Two
species of great beaked hornbills inhabit the forest; and
there are three or four species of swallows. One of the
prettiest of all the small birds is a long-tailed green and
brown fly-catcher, which might easily he mistaken for a
swallow, so swift and graceful is its flight. A large
red kingfisher (Halcyon caromanda), found here, builds
its nest in a peculiar manner, as described by Mr. Sharpe,
in Proc. Zool. Soc., 1879, part ii., p. 331:—
“ The nest is said to be pendulous, and invariably to
be accompanied in the same mass by a bee, which is
peculiarly vicious, so that the nest can only be robbed
after destroying the bees.”
The interior of the island is flat and marshy; and
here the soil being deep and alluvial, it is well adapted
for rice; and the wet patches beside the streams suit the
sago palm well. In the patches of low jungle beside the
roads three or four species of pitcher plants abound,
rooting into the wet, sandy peat earth, and climbing up
the shrubby undergrowth in the most luxuriant and
graceful manner. These nepenthes stems are wonderfully
tough, and are used as withes, and as a substitute
for rattan cane in tying fence timbers together. More
rarely they are used in basket-work. The kinds most
common in Labuan are N. gracilis, several varieties,
N. nivea, and N. ampullaria. There are five or six species
of terrestrial orchids; and from trees on Dr. Ley’s estate
plants of the new genus astrostruma (A.spartiodes, Benth.)
were gathered for the first time.
Alligators infest the streams, and shallow sea, near the
town of Yictoria; and now and then a native is carried
off. One of these large brutes actually tried to carry
off a pony one night during my stay. Snakes are plentiful.
A deadly green snake is common on the Bird
Island, just off the mouth of the harbour, and great
brown rock snakes abound. One night a Kling man
brought a black snake, six feet long, tied to a stick,
which he said he had caught up a cocoa-nut tree, and
added that it had just swallowed a bird. It was purchased
; and in the morning, when it was being skinned,
the “ boy ” came to say that it had young ones inside it.
This we did not believe; and, on going to see it, we
found that the “ young one ” was a snake, two feet
long, of another species, very common in the island,
which had been swallowed head foremost, as usual, and
was in part digested. The large snake was so fat, that
hunger could not have prompted it to swallow a smaller
brother; and so I more than suspect that Malaysia can
now boast of a snake-eating snake, as well as British
India, whence one of these cannibals, the ophiophagus,
was introduced to the Zoological Gardens a few years
ago.A
large boa, ten to twenty feet long, and as thick as
one’s arm, is common in the jungle, and often commits
depredations amongst badly-housed poultry, as also does
the iguana. A singular sluggishness characterised all
the snakes I saw ; and as many of those said to be deadly
by the natives rest on the trees, rather than on the
ground, this may account for the extreme rarity of
death from snake-bites in this part of the East. A