became scarce, so that my only resource was insect-hunting.
I worked very hard every hour of fine weather, and
daily obtained a number of new species. Every dead tree
and fallen log was searched and searched again; and among
the dry and rotting leaves, which still hung on certain
trees which had been cut down, I found an abundant
harvest of minute Coleóptera. Although I never afterwards
found so many large and handsome beetles as in
Borneo, yet I obtained here a great variety of species. Eor
the first two or three weeks, while I was searching out the
best localities, I took about 30 different kinds of beetles a
day, besides about half that number of butterflies, and a
few of the other orders. But afterwards, up to the very
last week, I averaged 49 species a day. On the 31st of
May, I took 78 distinct sorts, a larger number than I had
ever captured before, principally obtained among dead
trees and under rotten bark. A good long walk on a fine
day up the hill, and to the plantations of the natives,
capturing everything not very common that came in my
way, would produce about 60 species; but on the last day
of June I brought home no less than 95 distinct kinds of
beetles, a larger number than I ever obtained in one day
before or since. I t was a fine hot day, and I devoted it to
a search among dead leaves, beating foliage, and hunting
under rotten bark, in all the best stations I had discovered
during my walks. I was out from ten in the morning till
three in the afternoon, and it took me six hours’ work at
home to pin and set out all the specimens, and to separate
the species. Although I had already been working this
spot daily for two months and a half, and had obtained
over 800 species of Coleóptera, this day’s work added 32
new ones. Among these were 4 Longicorns, 2 Carabida?,
7 Staphylinidae, 7 Curculionidse, 2 Copridse, 4 Chrysomelidaa,
3 Heteromera, 1 Elater, and 1 Buprestis. Even on the
last day I went out, I obtained 16 new species; so that
although I collected over a thousand distinct sorts of
beetles in a space not much exceeding a square mile
during the three months of my residence at Dorey, I
cannot believe that this represents one half the species
really inhabiting the same spot, or a fourth of what might
be obtained in an area extending twenty miles in each
direction.
On the 22d of July the schooner Hester Helena arrived,
and five days afterwards we bade adieu to Dorey, without
much regret, for in no place which I have visited have I
encountered more privations and annoyances. Continual
rain, continual sickness, little wholesome food, with a
plague of ants and flies, surpassing anything I had before
met with, required all a naturalist’s ardour to encounter;
and when they were uncompensated by great success in
collecting, became all the more insupportable. This long-
thought-of and much-desired voyage to New Guinea had