were made alone, but during the
last eighteen months he was accompanied by a brave woman who came out
from England to Batavia to be married to him at the close of 1881. It is
painful to read of the deadly ordeals of climate and the excessive
discomforts and privations to which this lady was exposed. Her diary,
kept at Dilly during her husband's absence, while she was ill, utterly
deserted, and in danger of a lonely and agonizing death, makes a
singular contrast to the record of Miss Bird and others of her sex who
seem to have triumphed over all the vicissitudes possible to women. To
the general reader Mr. Forbes's travels in Java, Sumatra, and the
Keeling Islands are far more satisfactory than in those less familiar,
like Timor and Buru. In the light of the terrible events of 1883,
everything connected with the islands lying on either side of the
Straits of Sunda is of the highest interest. Those appalling disasters
which swept away part of Sumatra and Java and altered the configuration
of the whole volcanic group surrounding Krakatoa took place only a few
weeks after Mr. and Mrs. Forbes sailed for home. This widespread
destruction seemed to the inhabitants the culmination of a series of
calamitous years of drought, wet, blight, bovine pestilence, and fever.
It was Mr. Forbes's fortune to be in Java during these bad seasons,
which, from combined causes, made it impossible for flowers to perfect
themselves and fructify. This circumstance was, however, useful to the
naturalist, offering him an opportunity for experiments in the
fertilization of orchids and other plants. The account of the Dutch
cinchona-plantations, which now furnish quinine of the best quality, is
full of interest.

Mr. Forbes's visit to the Cocos-Keeling Islands, in the Indian Ocean,
cannot be passed over. He was eager to visit a coral-reef, and this
atoll, stocked and planted only by the flotsam and jetsam of the seas,
the winds, and migrating birds, offers to the naturalist a most
delightful study; for here, progressing almost under his eyes, are the
phenomena which have made Bermuda and other coral groups. Little as the
Keeling Islands seem to offer in the way of secure habitation, they have
a population of some hundreds of people, presided over by their
energetic proprietor, Mr. Ross, who has planted the atoll thickly with
cocoanut palms. Gathering the nuts and expressing the oil is the chief
industry of the inhabitants, who are all taught to work a