Very fine.
7th 8 Very fine.
8th 10 Fine.
9th 36 Showery.
10th 30 Showery.
11th 260 Heavy rain all night, and dark.
12th 56 Showery.
13th 44 Showery; some moonlight.
14th 4 Fine; moonlight.
15th 24 Rain; moonlight.
16th 6 Showers; moonlight.
17th 6 Showers; moonlight.
18th 1 Showers; moonlight.
Total 1,386

It thus appears that on twenty-six nights I collected 1,386 moths, but
that more than 800 of them were collected on four very wet and dark
nights. My success here led me to hope that, by similar arrangements, I
might on every island be able to obtain an abundance of these insects;
but, strange to say, during the six succeeding years, I was never once
able to make any collections at all approaching those at Sarawak. The
reason for this I can pretty well understand to be owing to the absence
of some one or other essential condition that were here all combined.
Sometimes the dry season was the hindrance; more frequently residence
in a town or village not close to virgin forest, and surrounded by other
houses whose lights were a counter-attraction; still more frequently
residence in a dark palm-thatched house, with a lofty roof, in whose
recesses every moth was lost the instant it entered. This last was the
greatest drawback, and the real reason why I never again was able to
make a collection of moths; for I never afterwards lived in a solitary
jungle-house with a low boarded and whitewashed verandah, so constructed
as to prevent insects at once escaping into the upper part of the house,
quite out of reach.

After my long experience, my numerous failures, and my one success, I
feel sure that if any party of naturalists ever make a yacht-voyage to
explore the Malayan Archipelago, or any other tropical region, making
entomology one of their chief pursuits, it would well repay them to
carry a small framed verandah, or a verandah-shaped tent of white
canvas, to set up in every favourable situation, as a means of making
a collection of nocturnal Lepidoptera, and also of obtaining rare
specimens of Coleoptera and other insects. I make the suggestion here,
because no one would suspect the enormous