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.
In the forests of Ke, arboreal Liliaceae and Pandanaceae abound,
and give a character to the vegetation in the more exposed rocky
places. Flowers were scarce, and there were not many orchids, but
I noticed the fine white butterfly-orchis, Phalaenopsis
grandiflora, or a species closely allied to it. The freshness and
vigour of the vegetation was very pleasing, and on such an arid
rocky surface was a sure indication of a perpetually humid
climate. Tall clean trunks, many of them buttressed, and immense
trees of the fig family, with aerial roots stretching out and
interlacing and matted together for fifty or a hundred feet above
the ground, were the characteristic features; and there was an
absence of thorny shrubs and prickly rattans, which would have
made these wilds very pleasant to roam in, had it not been for
the sharp honeycombed rocks already alluded to. In damp places a
fine undergrowth of broadleaved herbaceous plants was found,
about which swarmed little green lizards, with tails of the most
"heavenly blue," twisting in and out among the stalks and foliage
so actively that I often caught glimpses of their tails only,
when they startled me by their resemblance to small snakes.
Almost the only sounds in these primeval woods proceeded from two
birds, the red lories, who utter shrill screams like most of the
parrot tribe, and the large green nutmeg-pigeon, whose voice is
either a loud and deep boom, like two notes struck upon a very
large gong, or sometimes a harsh toad-like croak, altogether
peculiar and remarkable.
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