Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Remarkable beetles found at Simunjon, Borneo
When I arrived at the mines, on the 14th of March, I had collected in the four preceding
months, 320 different kinds of beetles. In less than a fortnight I had doubled this number, an
average of about 24 new species every day. On one day I collected 76 different kinds, of
which 34 were new to me. By the end of April I had more than a thousand species, and they
then went on increasing at a slower rate; so that I obtained altogether in Borneo about two
thousand distinct kinds, of which all but about a hundred were collected at this place, and on
scarcely more than a square mile of ground. The most numerous and most interesting groups
of beetles were the Longicorns and Rhynchophora, both pre-eminently wood-feeders. The
former, characterised by their graceful forms and long antennæ, were especially numerous,
amounting to nearly three hundred species, nine-tenths of which were entirely new, and
many of them remarkable for their large size, strange forms, and beautiful colouring. The
latter correspond to our weevils and allied groups, and in the tropics are exceedingly numer-
ous and varied, often swarming upon dead timber, so that I sometimes obtained fifty or sixty
