avels. Indeed, I could have printed
my notes and journals at once, leaving all reference to questions of
natural history for a future work; but, I felt that this would be as
unsatisfactory to myself as it would be disappointing to my friends, and
uninstructive to the public.

Since my return, up to this date, I have published eighteen papers
in the "Transactions" or "Proceedings of the Linnean Zoological and
Entomological Societies", describing or cataloguing portions of my
collections, along with twelve others in various scientific periodicals
on more general subjects connected with them.

Nearly two thousand of my Coleoptera, and many hundreds of my
butterflies, have been already described by various eminent naturalists,
British and foreign; but a much larger number remains undescribed. Among
those to whom science is most indebted for this laborious work, I must
name Mr. F. P. Pascoe, late President of the Entomological Society of
London, who had almost completed the classification and description
of my large collection of Longicorn beetles (now in his possession),
comprising more than a thousand species, of which at least nine hundred
were previously undescribed and new to European cabinets.

The remaining orders of insects, comprising probably more than two
thousand species, are in the collection of Mr. William Wilson Saunders,
who has caused the larger portion of them to be described by good
entomologists. The Hymenoptera alone amounted to more than nine hundred
species, among which were two hundred and eighty different kinds of
ants, of which two hundred were new.

The six years' delay in publishing my travels thus enables me to give
what I hope may be an interesting and instructive sketch of the main
results yet arrived at by the study of my collections; and as the
countries I have to describe are not much visited or written about, and
their social and physical conditions are not liable to rapid change, I
believe and hope that my readers will gain much more than they will
lose by not having read my book six years ago, and by this time perhaps
forgotten all about it.

I must now say a few words on the plan of my work.

My journeys to the various islands were regulated by the seasons and
the means of conveyance. I visited some islands two or three times at
distant intervals, and in some cases had to make the same voyage four
times over. A chronological arrangement would have puzzled my readers.
They would ne