uch 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 be
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,
capturi