It Was Quite A New Species,
And Had Not Been Found Elsewhere Than On This Little Island.
It
is one of the Buprestidae, and has been named Cyphogastra
calepyga.
Each morning after an early breakfast I wandered by myself into
the forest, where I found delightful occupation in capturing the
large and handsome butterflies, which were tolerably abundant,
and most of them new to me; for I was now upon the confines of
the Moluccas and New Guinea, - a region the productions of which
were then among the most precious and rare in the cabinets of
Europe. Here my eyes were feasted for the first time with
splendid scarlet lories on the wing, as well as by the sight of
that most imperial butterfly, the "Priamus "of collectors, or a
closely allied species, but flying so high that I did not succeed
in capturing a specimen. One of them was brought me in a bamboo,
bored up with a lot of beetles, and of course torn to pieces. The
principal drawback of the place for a collector is the want of
good paths, and the dreadfully rugged character of the surface,
requiring the attention to be so continually directed to securing
a footing, as to make it very difficult to capture active winged
things, who pass out of reach while one is glancing to see that
the next step may not plunge one into a chasm or over a
precipice. Another inconvenience is that there are no running
streams, the rock being of so porous a nature that the surface-
water everywhere penetrates its fissures; at least such is the
character of the neighbourhood we visited, the only water being
small springs trickling out close to the sea-beach.
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