It Must Be Remembered Too That Our Commerce Is Not A Purely Natural Growth. It Has Been Ever Fostered By The Legislature, And Forced To An Unnatural Luxuriance By The Protection Of Our Fleets And Armies. The Wisdom And The Justice Of This Policy Have Been Already Doubted.

So soon, therefore, as it is seen that the further extension of our manufactures and commerce would be an evil, the remedy is not far to seek.

After six weeks' confinement to the house I was at length well, and could resume my daily walks in the forest. I did not, however, find it so productive as when I had first arrived at Dobbo. There was a damp stagnation about the paths, and insects were very scarce. In some of my best collecting places I now found a mass of rotting wood, mingled with young shoots, and overgrown with climbers, yet I always managed to add something daily to my extensive collections. I one day met with a curious example of failure of instinct, which, by showing it to be fallible, renders it very doubtful whether it is anything more than hereditary habit, dependent on delicate modifications of sensation. Some sailors cut down a good-sized tree, and, as is always my practice, I visited it daily for some time in search of insects. Among other beetles came swarms of the little cylindrical woodborers (Platypus, Tesserocerus, &c.), and commenced making holes in the bark. After a day or two I was surprised to find hundreds of them sticking in the holes they had bored, and on examination discovered that the milky sap of the tree was of the nature of gutta-percha, hardening rapidly on exposure to the air, and glueing the little animals in self-dug graves. The habit of boring holes in trees in which to deposit their eggs, was not accompanied by a sufficient instinctive knowledge of which trees were suitable, and which destructive to them. If, as is very probable, these trees have an attractive odour to certain species of borers, it might very likely lead to their becoming extinct; while other species, to whom the same odour was disagreeable, and who therefore avoided the dangerous trees, would survive, and would be credited by us with an instinct, whereas they would really be guided by a simple sensation.

Those curious little beetles, the Brenthidae, were very abundant in Aru. The females have a pointed rostrum, with which they bore deep holes in the bark of dead trees, often burying the rostrum up to the eyes, and in these holes deposit their eggs. The males are larger, and have the rostrum dilated at the end, and sometimes terminating in a good-sized pair of jaws. I once saw two males fighting together; each had a fore-leg laid across the neck of the other, and the rostrum bent quite in an attitude of defiance, and looking most ridiculous. Another time, two were fighting for a female, who stood close by busy at her boring. They pushed at each other with their rostra, and clawed and thumped, apparently in the greatest rage, although their coats of mail must have saved both from injury.

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