fruit-eating birds,
something like small toucans, with a short, straight bristly bill, and
whose head and neck are variegated with patches of the most vivid blue
and crimson. A day or two after, my hunter brought me a specimen of
the green gaper (Calyptomena viridis), which is like a small
cock-of-the-rock, but entirely of the most vivid green, delicately
marked on the wings with black bars. Handsome woodpeckers and gay
kingfishers, green and brown cuckoos with velvety red faces and green
beaks, red-breasted doves and metallic honeysuckers, were brought in day
after day, and kept me in a continual state of pleasurable excitement.
After a fortnight one of my servants was seized with fever, and on
returning to Malacca, the same disease, attacked the other as well as
myself. By a liberal use of quinine, I soon recovered, and obtaining
other men, went to stay at the Government bungalow of Ayer-panas,
accompanied by a young gentleman, a native of the place, who had a taste
for natural history.

At Ayer-panas we had a comfortable house to stay in, and plenty of
room to dry and preserve our specimens; but, owing to there being no
industrious Chinese to cut down timber, insects were comparatively
scarce, with the exception of butterflies, of which I formed a very fine
collection. The manner in which I obtained one fine insect was curious,
and indicates bow fragmentary and imperfect a traveller's collection
must necessarily be. I was one afternoon walking along a favourite road
through the forest, with my gun, when I saw a butterfly on the ground.
It was large, handsome, and quite new to me, and I got close to it
before it flew away. I then observed that it had been settling on the
dung of some carnivorous animal. Thinking it might return to the same
spot, I next day after breakfast took my net, and as I approached the
place was delighted to see the same butterfly sitting on the same piece
of dung, and succeeded in capturing it. It was an entirely new species
of great beauty, and has been named by Mr. Hewitson--Nymphalis calydona.
I never saw another specimen of it, and it was only after twelve years
had elapsed that a second individual reached this country from the
northwestern part of Borneo.

Having determined to visit Mount Ophir, which is situated in the middle
of the peninsula about fifty miles east of Malacca, we engaged six
Malays to accompany us and carry our baggage. As we meant to stay at
least a week at the mountai