Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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, capturing everything not very common that came in my way,
would produce about 60 species; but on the last day of June I brought home no less than 95
distinct kinds of beetles, a larger number than I ever obtained in one day before or since. It
was a fine hot day, and I devoted it to a search among dead leaves, beating foliage, and
hunting under rotten bark, in all the best stations I had discovered during my walks. I was
out from ten in the morning till three in the afternoon, and it took me six hours' work at
home to pin and set out all the specimens, and to separate the species. Although I had
already been working this spot daily for two months and a half, and had obtained over 800
species of Coleoptera, this day's work added 32 new ones. Among these were 4 Longicorns,
2 Carabidæ, 7 Staphylinidæ, 7 Curculionidæ, 2 Copridæ, 4 Chrysomelidæ, 3 Heteromera, 1
Elater, and 1 Buprestis. Even on the last day I went out, I obtained 16 new species; so that
although I collected over a thousand distinct sorts of beetles in a space not much exceeding
a square mile during the three months of my residence at Dorey, I cannot believe that this
represents one half the species really inhabiting the same spot, or a fourth of what might be
obtained in an area extending twenty miles in each direction.
On the 22d of July the schooner
Hester Helena
arrived, and five days afterwards we bade
adieu to Dorey, without much regret, for in no place which I have visited have I encountered
more privations and annoyances. Continual rain, continual sickness, little wholesome food,
with a plague of ants and flies, surpassing anything I had before met with, required all a nat-
uralist's ardour to encounter; and when they were uncompensated by great success in col-
lecting, became all the more insupportable. This long-thought-of and much-desired voyage
to New Guinea had realized none of my expectations. Instead of being far better than the
Aru Islands, it was in almost everything much worse. Instead of producing several of the
rarer Paradise birds, I had not even seen one of them, and had not obtained any one superlat-
ively fine bird or insect. I cannot deny, however, that Dorey was very rich in ants. One small
black kind was excessively abundant. Almost every shrub and tree was more or less infested
with it, and its large papery nests were everywhere to be seen. They immediately took pos-
session of my house, building a large nest in the roof, and forming papery tunnels down al-
most every post. They swarmed on my table as I was at work setting out my insects, carry-
ing them off from under my very nose, and even tearing them from the cards on which they
were gummed if I left them for an instant. They crawled continually over my hands and
face, got into my hair, and roamed at will over my whole body, not producing much incon-
venience till they began to bite, which they would do on meeting with any obstruction to
their passage, and with a sharpness which made me jump again and rush to undress and turn
