the numerous examples I have met with of the good effects of the Dutch
Government. It exercises a strict surveillance over its most distant possessions,
establishes a form of government well adapted to the character of the people,
reforms abuses, punishes crimes, and makes itself everywhere respected by the
native population.
Lobo Raman is a central point of the east end of Sumatra, being about a
hundred and twenty miles from the sea to the east, north, and west. The surface
is undulating, with no mountains or even hills, and there is no rock, the soil
being generally a red friable clay. Numbers of small streams and rivers intersect
the country, and it is pretty equally divided between open clearings and patches
of forest, both virgin and second growth, with abundance of fruit trees; and there
is no lack of paths to get about in any direction. Altogether it is the very country
that would promise most for a naturalist, and I feel sure that at a more favourable
time of year it would prove exceedingly rich; but it was now the rainy season,
when, in the very best of localities, insects are always scarce, and there being no
fruit on the trees, there was also a scarcity of birds. During a month's collecting,
I added only three or four new species to my list of birds, although I obtained
very fine specimens of many which were rare and interesting. In butterflies I was
rather more successful, obtaining several fine species quite new to me, and a
considerable number of very rare and beautiful insects. I will give here some
account of two species of butterflies, which, though very common in collections,
present us with peculiarities of the highest interest.
The first is the handsome Papilio memnon, a splendid butterfly of a deep
black colour, dotted over with lines and groups of scales of a clear ashy blue. Its
wings are five inches in expanse, and the hind wings are rounded, with scalloped
edges. This applies to the males; but the females are very different, and vary so
much that they were once supposed to form several distinct species. They may
be divided into two groups—those which resemble the male in shape, and, those
which differ entirely from him in the outline of the wings. The first vary much in
colour, being often nearly white with dusky yellow and red markings, but such
differences often occur in butterflies. The second group are much more
extraordinary, and would never be supposed to be the same insect, since the hind
wings are lengthened out into large spoon-shaped tails, no rudiment of which is
ever to be perceived in the males or in the ordinary form of females. These tailed
females are never of the dark and blue-glossed tints which prevail in the male
and often occur in the females of the same form, but are invariably ornamented
with stripes and patches of white or buff, occupying the larger part of the surface
of the hind wings. This peculiarity of colouring led me to discover that this