the mixture of the Portuguese or Brazilian with the Indian
produces the “ Mameluco,” who is not unfrequently lighter
than either parent, and always lighter than the Indian.
The women at Batchian, although generally fairer than
the men, are coarse in features, and very far inferior in
beauty to the mixed Dutch-Malay girls, or even to many
pure Malays.
The part of the village in which I resided was a grove of
cocoa-nut trees, and at night, wdien the dead leaves were
sometimes collected together and burnt, the effect was most
magnificent—-the tall stems, the fine crowns of foliage, and
the immense fruit-clusters, being brilliantly illuminated
against’ a dark sky, and appearing like a fairy palace supported
on a hundred columns, and groined over with leafy
arches. The cocoa-nut tree, when well grown, is certainly
the prince of palms both for beauty and utility.
During my very first walk into the forest at Batchian, I
had seen sitting on a leaf out of reach, an immense butterfly
of a dark colour marked With white and yellow spots.
I could not capture it as it flew away high up into the
forest, hut I at once saw that it was a female of a new
species of Omithoptera or “ bird-winged butterfly,” the
pride of the Eastern tropics. I was very anxious to get
it and to find the male, which in this genus is always of
extreme beauty. During the ' two succeeding months I
only saw it once again, and shortly afterwards I saw the
male flying high in the air at the mining village. I had
begun to despair of ever getting a specimen, as it seemed
so rare and wild ; till one day, about the beginning of
January, I found a beautiful shrub with large white leafy
bracts and yellow flowers, a. species of Musssenda, and saw
one of these noble insects hovering over it, but it was too
quick for me, and flew away. The next day I went again
to the same shrub and succeeded in catching a female, and
the day after a fine male. I found it to be as I had expected,
a perfectly new and most magnificent species, and one of
the most gorgeously coloured butterflies in the world.
Pine specimens of the male are more than seven inches
across the wings, which are velvety black and fiery orange,
the latter colour replacing the green of the allied species.
The beauty and brilliancy of this insect are indescribable,
and none but a naturalist can understand the intense
excitement I experienced when I at length captured it.
On taking it out of my net and opening the glorious wings,
my heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to my
head, and I felt much more like fainting than I have done
when in apprehension of immediate death. I had a headache
the rest of the day, so great was the excitement
produced by what will appear to most people a very
inadequate cause.
I had decided to return to Ternate in a week or two
more, but this grand capture determined me to stay on till
E 2