ravines, and the rock itself is more compact and crystalline. It is therefore,
probably older, a more recent elevation having exposed the low grounds and
islands. On the other side of the bay rise the great mass of the Arfak mountains,
said by the French navigators to be about ten thousand feet high, and inhabited
by savage tribes. These are held in great dread by the Dorey people, who have
often been attacked and plundered by them, and have some of their skulls
hanging outside their houses. If I was seem going into the forest anywhere in the
direction of the mountains, the little boys of the village would shout after me,
"Arfaki! Arfaki?" just as they did after Lesson nearly forty years before.
On the 15th of May the Dutch war-steamer Etna arrived; but, as the coals had
gone, it was obliged to stay till they came back. The captain knew when the
coalship was to arrive, and how long it was chartered to stay at Dorey, and could
have been back in time, but supposed it would wait for him, and so did not hurry
himself. The steamer lay at anchor just opposite my house, and I had the
advantage of hearing the half-hourly bells struck, which was very pleasant after
the monotonous silence of the forest. The captain, doctor, engineer, and some
other of the officers paid me visits; the servants came to the brook to wash
clothes, and the son of the Prince of Tidore, with one or two companions, to
bathe; otherwise I saw little of them, and was not disturbed by visitors so much
as I had expected to be. About this time the weather set in pretty fine, but neither
birds nor insects became much more abundant, and new birds-were very scarce.
None of the Birds of Paradise except the common one were ever met with, and
we were still searching in vain for several of the fine birds which Lesson had
obtained here. Insects were tolerably abundant, but were not on the average so
fine as those of Amboyna, and I reluctantly came to the conclusion that Dorey
was not a good collecting locality. Butterflies were very scarce, and were mostly
the same as those which I had obtained at Aru.
Among the insects of other orders, the most curious and novel were a group of
horned flies, of which I obtained four distinct species, settling on fallen trees and
decaying trunks. These remarkable insects, which have been described by Mr.
W. W. Saunders as a new genus, under the name of Elaphomia or deer-flies, are
about half an inch long, slender-bodied, and with very long legs, which they
draw together so as to elevate their bodies high above the surface they are
standing upon. The front pair of legs are much shorter, and these are often
stretched directly forwards, so as to resemble antenna. The horns spring from
beneath the eye, and seem to be a prolongation of the lower part of the orbit. In
the largest and most singular species, named Elaphomia cervicornis or the stag-
horned deer-fly, these horns are nearly as long as the body, having two branches,