During The Whole Of My Stay, However, Insects Never Became
Plentiful.
My clearing produced me a few fine, longicorns and
Buprestidae, different from any I had before seen, together with
several of the Amboyna species, but by no means so numerous or,
so beautiful as I had found in that small island.
For example, I
collected only 210 different kinds of beetles during my two
months' stay at Bourn, while in three weeks at Amboyna, in 1857,
I found more than 300 species: One of the finest insects found at
Bouru was a large Cerambyx, of a deep shining chestnut colour,
and with very long antennae. It varied greatly in size, the
largest specimens being three inches long, while the smallest
were only an inch, the antenna varying from one and a half to
five inches.
One day my boy Ali came home with a story of a big snake. He was
walking through some high grass, and stepped on something which
he took for a small fallen tree, but it felt cold and yielding to
his feet, and far to the right and left there was a waving and
rustling of the herbage. He jumped back in affright and prepared
to shoot, but could not get a good vies of the creature, and it
passed away, he said, like a tree being dragged along through the
grass. As he lead several times already shot large snakes, which
he declared were all as nothing compared with this, I am inclined
to believe it must really have been a monster.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 119 of 412
Words from 31888 to 32146
of 111511
