uced me several new insects, but scarcely
any birds. Butterflies and birds are in fact remarkably scarce in these
forests. One may walk a whole day and not see more than two or three
species of either. In everything but beetles, these eastern islands are
very deficient compared with the western (Java, Borneo, &c.), and much
more so if compared with the forests of South America, where twenty or
thirty species of butterflies may be caught every day, and on very
good days a hundred, a number we can hardly reach here in months of
unremitting search. In birds there is the same difference. In most
parts of tropical America we may always find some species of
woodpecker tanager, bush shrike, chatterer, trogon, toucan, cuckoo,
and tyrant-flycatcher; and a few days' active search will produce more
variety than can be here met with in as many months. Yet, along with
this poverty of individuals and of species, there are in almost every
class and order, some one, or two species of such extreme beauty or
singularity, as to vie with, or even surpass, anything that even South
America can produce.

One afternoon when I was arranging my insects, and surrounded by a crowd
of wondering spectators, I showed one of them how to look at a small
insect with a hand-lens, which caused such evident wonder that all the
rest wanted to see it too. I therefore fixed the glass firmly to a piece
of soft wood at the proper focus, and put under it a little spiny
beetle of the genus Hispa, and then passed it round for examination. The
excitement was immense. Some declared it was a yard long; others were
frightened, and instantly dropped it, and all were as much astonished,
and made as much shouting and gesticulation, as children at a pantomime,
or at a Christmas exhibition of the oxyhydrogen microscope. And all
this excitement was produced by a little pocket lens, an inch and a half
focus, and therefore magnifying only four or five times, but which to
their unaccustomed eyes appeared to enlarge a hundred fold.

On the last day of my stay here, one of my hunters succeeded in finding
and shooting the beautiful Nicobar pigeon, of which I had been so long
in search. None of the residents had ever seen it, which shows that it
is rare and slay. My specimen was a female in beautiful condition, and
the glassy coppery and green of its plumage, the snow-white tail
and beautiful pendent feathers of the neck, were greatly admired. I
subsequently obtained a specimen i