therefore, probably, older, a more recent elevation having
exposed the low grounds and islands. On the other side
of the. bay rise the great mass of the Arfak mountains,
said by the French navigators to be about ten thousand
feet high, and inhabited by savage tribes. These are
held in great dread by the Dorey people, who have often
been attacked and plundered by them, and have some of
their skulls hanging outside their houses. If I was seen
going into the forest anywhere in the direction of the
mountains, the little boys of the village would shout after
me, “ Arfaki! Arfaki!” just as they did after Lesson
nearly forty years before.
On the 15th of May the Dutch war-steamer Etna
arrived; but, as the coals had gone, it was obliged to
stay till they came back. The captain knew when the
coalship was to arrive, and how long it was chartered to
stay at Dorey, and could have been back in time, but
supposed it would wait for him, and so did not hurry
himself. The steamer lay at anchor just opposite my
house, and I had the advantage of hearing the half-
hourly bells struck, which was very pleasant after the
monotonous silence of the forest. The captain, doctor,
engineer, and some other of the officers paid me visits;
the servants came to the brook to wash clothes, and the
son of the Prince of Tidore, with one or two companions,
to bathe; otherwise I saw little of them, and was not
disturbed by visitors so much as I had expected to be.
About this time the weather set in pretty fine, but neither
birds nor insects became much more abundant, and new
birds were very scarce. None of the Birds of Paradise
except the common one were ever met with, and we were
still searching in vain for several of the fine birds which
Lesson had obtained here. Insects were tolerably abundant,
but Were not on the average so fine as those of
Amboyna, and I reluctantly came to the conclusion that
Dorey was not a good collecting locality. Butterflies were
very scarce, and were mostly the same as those which I
had obtained at Aru.
Among the insects of other orders, the most curious and
novel were a group of horned flies, of which I obtained
four distinct species, settling on fallen trees and decaying-
trunks. These remarkable insects, which have been described
by Mr. W. W. Saunders as a new genus, under the
name of Elaphomia or deer-flies, are about half an inch
long, slender-bodied, and with very long legs, which they
draw together so as to elevate their bodies high above the
surface they are standing upon. The front pair of legs
are much shorter, and these are often stretched directly
forwards, so as to resemble antennae. The horns spring
from beneath the eye, and seem to be a prolongation of
the lower part of the orbit. In the largest and most
singular species, named Elaphomia cervicornis or the stag