Twenty Miles Beyond Buitenzorg The Post Road Passes Over The Megamendong Mountain, At An Elevation Of About 4,500 Feet.

The country is finely mountainous, and there is much virgin forest still left upon the hills, together with some of the oldest coffee-plantations in Java, where the plants have attained almost the dimensions of forest trees.

About 500 feet below the summit level of the pass there is a road-keeper's hut, half of which I hired for a fortnight, as the country looked promising for making collections. I almost immediately found that the productions of West Java were remarkably different from those of the eastern part of the island; and that all the more remarkable and characteristic Javanese birds and insects were to be found here. On the very first day, my hunters obtained for me the elegant yellow and green trogon (Harpactes Reinwardti), the gorgeous little minivet flycatcher (Pericrocotus miniatus), which looks like a flame of fire as it flutters among the bushes, and the rare and curious black and crimson oriole (Analcipus sanguinolentus), all of these species which are found only in Java, and even seem to be confined to its western portion.

In a week I obtained no less than twenty-four species of birds, which I had not found in the east of the island, and in a fortnight this number increased to forty species, almost all of which are peculiar to the Javanese fauna. Large and handsome butterflies were also tolerably abundant. In dark ravines, and occasionally on the roadside, I captured the superb Papilio arjuna, whose wings seem powdered with grains of golden green, condensed into bands and moon-shaped spots; while the elegantly- formed Papilio coon was sometimes to be found fluttering slowly along the shady pathways (see figure at page 201). One day a boy brought me a butterfly between his fingers, perfectly unhurt. He had caught it as it was sitting with wings erect, sucking up the liquid from a muddy spot by the roadside. Many of the finest tropical butterflies have this habit, and they are generally so intent upon their meal that they can be easily be reached and captured. It proved to be the rare and curious Charaxes kadenii, remarkable for having on each hind wing two curved tails like a pair of callipers. It was the only specimen I ever saw, and is still the only representative of its kind in English collections.

In the east of Java I had suffered from the intense heat and drought of the dry season, which had been very inimical to insect life. Here I had got into the other extreme of damp, wet, and cloudy weather, which was equally unfavourable. During the month which I spent in the interior of West Java, I never had a really hot fine, day throughout. It rained almost every afternoon, or dense mists came down from the mountains, which equally stopped collecting, and rendered it most difficult to dry my specimens, so that I really had no chance of getting a fair sample of Javanese entomology.

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