In This Way I Obtained On An Average One Specimen A Day For A Long Time, But More Than Half

Of these were females, and more than half the remainder worn or broken specimens, so that I should not have

Obtained many perfect males had I not found another station for them.

As soon as I had seen them come to flowers, I sent my man Lahi with a net on purpose to search for them, as they had also been seen at some flowering trees on the beach, and I promised him half a day's wages extra for every good specimen he could catch. After a day or two he brought me two very fair specimens, and told me he had caught them in the bed of a large rocky stream that descends from the mountains to the sea abort a mile below the village. They flew down this river, settling occasionally on stones and rocks in the water, and he was obliged to wade up it or jump from rock to rock to get at them. I went with him one day, but found that the stream was far too rapid and the stones too slippery for me to do anything, so I left it entirely to him, and all the rest of the time we stayed in Batchian he used to be out all day, generally bringing me one, and on good days two or three specimens. I was thus able to bring away with me more than a hundred of both sexes, including perhaps twenty very fine males, though not more than five or six that were absolutely perfect.

My daily walk now led me, first about half a mile along the sandy beach, then through a sago swamp over a causeway of very shaky poles to the village of the Tomore people. Beyond this was the forest with patches of new clearing, shady paths, and a considerable quantity of felled timber. I found this a very fair collecting ground, especially for beetles. The fallen trunks in the clearings abounded with golden Buprestidae and curious Brenthidae, and longicorns, while in the forest I found abundance of the smaller Curculionidae, many longicorns, and some fine green Carabidae.

Butterflies were not abundant, but I obtained a few more of the fine blue Papilio, and a number of beautiful little Lycaenidae, as well as a single specimen of the very rare Papilio Wallacei, of which I had taken the hitherto unique specimen in the Aru Islands.

The most interesting birds I obtained here, were the beautiful blue kingfisher, Todiramphus diops; the fine green and purple doves, Ptilonopus superbus and P. iogaster, and several new birds of small size. My shooters still brought me in specimens of the Semioptera Wallacei, and I was greatly excited by the positive statements of several of the native hunters that another species of this bird existed, much handsomer and more remarkable. They declared that the plumage was glossy black, with metallic green breast as in my species, but that the white shoulder plumes were twice as long, and hung down far below the body of the bird.

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