Did We Not Already Know That Such Taste And Skill Are Compatible With Utter Barbarism, We Could Hardly Believe That The Same People Are, In Other Matters, Utterly Wanting In All Sense Of Order, Comfort, Or Decency.

Yet such is the case.

They live in the most miserable, crazy, and filthy hovels, which are utterly destitute of anything that can be called furniture; not a stool, or bench, or board is seen in them, no brush seems to be known, and the clothes they wear are often filthy bark, or rags, or sacking. Along the paths where they daily pass to and from their provision grounds, not an overhanging bough or straggling briar ever seems to he cut, so that you have to brush through a rank vegetation, creep under fallen trees and spiny creepers, and wade through pools of mud and mire, which cannot dry up because the sun is not allowed to penetrate. Their food is almost wholly roots and vegetables, with fish or game only as an occasional luxury, and they are consequently very subject to various skin diseases, the children especially being often miserable-looking objects, blotched all over with eruptions and sores. If these people are not savages, where shall we find any? Yet they have all a decided love for the fine arts, and spend their leisure time in executing works whose good taste and elegance would often be admired in our schools of design!

During the latter part of my stay in New Guinea the weather was very wet, my only shooter was ill, and birds became scarce, so that my only resource was insect-hunting. I worked very hard every hour of fine weather, and daily obtained a number of new species. Every dead tree and fallen log was searched and searched again; and among the dry and rotting leaves, which still hung on certain trees which had been cut down, I found an abundant harvest of minute Coleoptera. Although I never afterwards found so many large and handsome beetles as in Borneo, yet I obtained here a great variety of species. For the first two or three weeks, while I was searching out the best localities, I took about 30 different kinds of beetles n day, besides about half that number of butterflies, and a few of the other orders. But afterwards, up to the very last week, I averaged 49 species a day. On the 31st of May, I took 78 distinct sorts, a larger number than I had ever captured before, principally obtained among dead trees and under rotten bark. A good long walk on a fine day up the hill, and to the plantations of the natives, capturing everything not very common that came in my way, would produce about 60 species; but on the last day of June I brought home no less than 95 distinct kinds of beetles, a larger number than I ever obtained in one day before or since. It was a fine hot day, and I devoted it to a search among dead leaves, beating foliage, and hunting under rotten bark, in all the best stations I had discovered during my walks. I was out from ten in the morning till three in the afternoon, and it took me six hours' work at home to pin and set out all the specimens, and to separate the species. Although T had already been working this shot daily for two months and a half, and had obtained over 800 species of Coleoptera, this day's work added 32 new ones. Among these were 4 Longicorns, 2 Caribidae, 7 Staphylinidae, 7 Curculionidae, 2 Copridae, 4 Chrysomelidae, 3 Heteromera, 1 Elates, and 1 Buprestis. 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. They swarmed on my table as I was at work setting out my insects, carrying them off from under my very nose, and even tearing them from the cards on which they were gummed if I left them for an instant. They crawled continually over my hands and face, got into my hair, and roamed at will over my whole body, not producing much inconvenience till they began to bite, which they would do on meeting with any obstruction to their passage, and with a sharpness which made me jump again and rush to undress and turn out the offender. They visited my bed also, so that night brought no relief from their persecutions; and I verily believe that during my three and a half months' residence at Dorey I was never for a single hour entirely free from them.

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