dly
accommodated in Mr. Coulson's house, but finding the spot very suitable
for me and offering great facilities for collecting, I had a small house
of two rooms and a verandah built for myself. Here I remained nearly
nine months, and made an immense collection of insects, to which class
of animals I devoted my chief attention, owing to the circumstances
being especially favourable.

In the tropics a large proportion of the insects of all orders, and
especially of the large and favourite group of beetles, are more or less
dependent on vegetation, and particularly on timber, bark, and leaves
in various stages of decay. In the untouched virgin forest, the insects
which frequent such situations are scattered over an immense extent of
country, at spots where trees have fallen through decay and old age, or
have succumbed to the fury of the tempest; and twenty square miles of
country may not contain so many fallen and decayed trees as are to be
found in any small clearing. The quantity and the variety of beetles
and of many other insects that can be collected at a given time in any
tropical locality, will depend, first upon the immediate vicinity of a
great extent of virgin forest, and secondly upon the quantity of trees
that for some months past have been, and which are still being cut down,
and left to dry and decay upon the ground.

Now, during my whole twelve years' collecting in the western and eastern
tropics, I never enjoyed such advantages in this respect as at the
Simunjon coalworks. For several months from twenty to fifty Chinamen and
Dyaks were employed almost exclusively in clearing a large space in the
forest, and in making a wide opening for a railroad to the Sadong River,
two miles distant. Besides this, sawpits were established at various
points in the jungle, and large trees were felled to be cut up into
beams and planks. For hundreds of miles in every direction a magnificent
forest extended over plain and mountain, rock and morass, and I arrived
at the spot just as the rains began to diminish and the daily sunshine
to increase; a time which I have always found the most favourable season
for collecting. The number of openings, sunny places, and pathways were
also an attraction to wasps and butterflies; and by paying a cent each
for all insects that were brought me, I obtained from the Dyaks and the
Chinamen many fine locusts and Phasmidae, as well as numbers of handsome
beetles.

When I arrived at the mine