found elsewhere than on this little island. It is one of the Buprestidae, and has
been named Cyphogastra calepyga.
Each morning after an early breakfast I wandered by myself into the forest,
where I found delightful occupation in capturing the large and handsome
butterflies, which were tolerably abundant, and most of them new to me; for I
was now upon the confines of the Moluccas and New Guinea,—a region the
productions of which were then among the most precious and rare in the cabinets
of Europe. Here my eyes were feasted for the first time with splendid scarlet
lories on the wing, as well as by the sight of that most imperial butterfly, the
"Priamus" of collectors, or a closely allied species, but flying so high that I did
not succeed in capturing a specimen. One of them was brought me in a bamboo,
bored up with a lot of beetles, and of course torn to pieces. The principal
drawback of the place for a collector is the want of good paths, and the
dreadfully rugged character of the surface, requiring the attention to be so
continually directed to securing a footing, as to make it very difficult to capture
active winged things, who pass out of reach while one is glancing to see that the
next step may not plunge one into a chasm or over a precipice. Another
inconvenience is that there are no running streams, the rock being of so porous a
nature that the surface-water everywhere penetrates its fissures; at least such is
the character of the neighbourhood we visited, the only water being small
springs trickling out close to the sea-beach.
In the forests of Ke, arboreal Liliaceae and Pandanaceae abound, and give a
character to the vegetation in the more exposed rocky places. Flowers were
scarce, and there were not many orchids, but I noticed the fine white butterfly-
orchis, Phalaenopsis grandiflora, or a species closely allied to it. The freshness
and vigour of the vegetation was very pleasing, and on such an arid rocky
surface was a sure indication of a perpetually humid climate. Tall clean trunks,
many of them buttressed, and immense trees of the fig family, with aerial roots
stretching out and interlacing and matted together for fifty or a hundred feet
above the ground, were the characteristic features; and there was an absence of
thorny shrubs and prickly rattans, which would have made these wilds very
pleasant to roam in, had it not been for the sharp honeycombed rocks already
alluded to. In damp places a fine undergrowth of broadleaved herbaceous plants
was found, about which swarmed little green lizards, with tails of the most
"heavenly blue," twisting in and out among the stalks and foliage so actively that
I often caught glimpses of their tails only, when they startled me by their
resemblance to small snakes. Almost the only sounds in these primeval woods
proceeded from two birds, the red lories, who utter shrill screams like most of