During the latter part of my stay in New Guinea the weather was very wet, my
only shooter was ill, and birds became scarce, so that my only resource was
insect-hunting. I worked very hard every hour of fine weather, and daily
obtained a number of new species. Every dead tree and fallen log was searched
and searched again; and among the dry and rotting leaves, which still hung on
certain trees which had been cut down, I found an abundant harvest of minute
Coleoptera. Although I never afterwards found so many large and handsome
beetles as in Borneo, yet I obtained here a great variety of species. For the first
two or three weeks, while I was searching out the best localities, I took about 30
different kinds of beetles n day, besides about half that number of butterflies,
and a few of the other orders. But afterwards, up to the very last week, I
averaged 49 species a day. On the 31st of May, I took 78 distinct sorts, a larger
number than I had ever captured before, principally obtained among dead trees
and under rotten bark. A good long walk on a fine day up the hill, and to the
plantations of the natives, capturing everything not very common that came in
my way, would produce about 60 species; but on the last day of June I brought
home no less than 95 distinct kinds of beetles, a larger number than I ever
obtained in one day before or since. It was a fine hot day, and I devoted it to a
search among dead leaves, beating foliage, and hunting under rotten bark, in all
the best stations I had discovered during my walks. I was out from ten in the
morning till three in the afternoon, and it took me six hours' work at home to pin
and set out all the specimens, and to separate the species. Although T had
already been working this shot daily for two months and a half, and had obtained
over 800 species of Coleoptera, this day's work added 32 new ones. Among
these were 4 Longicorns, 2 Caribidae, 7 Staphylinidae, 7 Curculionidae, 2
Copridae, 4 Chrysomelidae, 3 Heteromera, 1 Elates, and 1 Buprestis. Even on
the last day I went out, I obtained 10 new species; so that although I collected
over a thousand distinct sorts of beetles in a space not much exceeding a square
mile during the three months of my residence at Dorey, I cannot believe that this
represents one half the species really inhabiting the same spot, or a fourth of
what might be obtained in an area extending twenty miles in each direction.
On the 22d of July the schooner Hester Helena arrived, and five days
afterwards we bade adieu to Dorey, without much regret, for in no place which I
have visited have I encountered more privations and annoyances. Continual rain,
continual sickness, little wholesome food, with a plague of ants and files,
surpassing anything I had before met with, required all a naturalist's ardour to
encounter; and when they were uncompensated by great success in collecting,
became all the more insupportable. This long thought-of and much-desired