The Few Days I Stayed Here Produced Me Several New Insects, But
Scarcely Any Birds.
Butterflies and birds are in fact remarkably
scarce in these forests.
One may walk a whole day and not see
more than two or three species of either. In everything but
beetles, these eastern islands are very deficient compared with
the western (Java, Borneo, &c.), and much more so if compared
with the forests of South America, where twenty or thirty species
of butterflies may be caught every day, and on very good days a
hundred, a number we can hardly reach here in months of
unremitting search. In birds there is the same difference. In
most parts of tropical America we may always find some species of
woodpecker tanager, bush shrike, chatterer, trogon, toucan,
cuckoo, and tyrant-flycatcher; and a few days' active search will
produce more variety than can be here met with in as many months.
Yet, along with this poverty of individuals and of species, there
are in almost every class and order, some one, or two species of
such extreme beauty or singularity, as to vie with, or even
surpass, anything that even South America can produce.
One afternoon when I was arranging my insects, and surrounded by
a crowd of wondering spectators, I showed one of them how to look
at a small insect with a hand-lens, which caused such evident
wonder that all the rest wanted to see it too. I therefore fixed
the glass firmly to a piece of soft wood at the proper focus, and
put under it a little spiny beetle of the genus Hispa, and then
passed it round for examination.
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