Even On The Last Day I Went Out, I
Obtained 10 New Species; So That Although I Collected Over A
Thousand distinct sorts of beetles in a space not much exceeding
a square mile during the three months of my
Residence at Dorey, I
cannot believe that this represents one half the species really
inhabiting the same spot, or a fourth of what might be obtained
in an area extending twenty miles in each direction.
On the 22d of July the schooner Hester Helena arrived, and five
days afterwards we bade adieu to Dorey, without much regret, for
in no place which I have visited have I encountered more
privations and annoyances. Continual rain, continual sickness,
little wholesome food, with a plague of ants and files,
surpassing anything I had before met with, required all a
naturalist's ardour to encounter; and when they were
uncompensated by great success in collecting, became all the more
insupportable. This long thought-of and much-desired voyage to
New Guinea had realized none of my expectations. Instead of being
far better than the Aru Islands, it was in almost everything much
worse. Instead of producing several of the rarer Paradise birds,
I had not even seen one of them, and had not obtained any one
superlatively fine bird or insect. I cannot deny, however, that
Dorey was very rich in ants. One small black kind was excessively
abundant. Almost every shrub and tree was more or less infested
with it, and its large papery nests were everywhere to be seen.
They immediately took possession of my house, building a large
nest in the roof, and forming papery tunnels down almost every
post.
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