crosses from the south to the north coast. But never in the whole of my tropical wanderings have I found a luxuriant forest so utterly barren of almost every form of animal life. Though I had three guns out daily, I did not get a single bird worth having; beetles, too, were totally wanting; and the very few butterflies seen were most difficult to capture. Those who imagine that a tropical forest in the very midst of so rich a region as the Moluccas must produce abundance of birds and insects, would have been woefully disillusioned if they could have been with me here. After immense difficulties I reached Goram, about fifty miles beyond the east end of Ceram, where I purchased a boat and started for Ké; but after getting half-way, the weather was so bad and the winds so adverse that I was obliged to return to the Matabello Islands, and thence by way of Goram and the north coast of Ceram to the great island of Waigiou. This was a long and most unfortunate voyage, as fully described elsewhere. I found there, however, what I chiefly went for the rare red bird of paradise (Paradisea rubra); but during the three months I lived there, often with very little food, I obtained only about seventy species of birds, mostly the same as those from New Guinea, though a few species of parrots, pigeons, kingfishers, and other birds were new. Insects were never abundant, but by continued perseverance I obtained rather more species of both butterflies and beetles than at New Guinea, though fewer, I think, of the more showy kinds.

The voyage from Waigiou back to Ternate was again most tedious and unfortunate, occupying thirty-eight days, whereas with reasonably favourable weather it should not have required more than ten or twelve. Taking my whole voyage in this canoe from Goram to Waigiou and Ternate, I thus summarize my account of it in my "Malay Archipelago": "My first crew ran away in a body; two men were lost on a desert island, and only recovered a month later after twice sending in search of them; we were ten times run aground on coral reefs; we lost four anchors; our sails were devoured by rats; our small boat was lost astern; we were thirty-eight days on a voyage which should not have taken twelve; we

were many times short of food and water; we had no compass-lamp owing to there being not a drop of oil in Waigiou when we left; and, to crown all, during our whole voyage from Goram by Ceram to Waigiou, and from Waigiou to Ternate, occupying in all seventy-eight days (or only twelve days short of three months), all in what was supposed to be the favourable season, we had not one single day of fair wind. We were always close braced up, always struggling against wind, currents, and leeway, and in a vessel that would scarcely sail nearer than eight points from the wind! Every seaman will admit that my first (and last) voyage in a boat of my own was a very unfortunate one."

While living at Bessir, the little village where I went to get the red paradise birds, I wrote a letter to my friend George Silk, which I finished and posted after my arrival at Ternate. As such letters as this, absolutely familiar and confidential, exhibit my actual feelings, opinions, and ideas at the time, I reproduce it here:

"MY DEAR GEORGE,

"Bessir, September 1, 1860.

"It is now ten months since the date of my last letter from England. You may fancy therefore that, in the expressive language of the trappers, I am 'half froze' for news. No such thing! Except for my own family and personal affairs I care not a straw and scarcely give a thought as to what may be uppermost in the political world. In my situation old newspapers are just as good as new ones, and I enjoy the odd scraps, in which I do up my birds (advertisements and all), as much as you do your Times at breakfast. If I live to return to Ternate in another month, I expect to get such a deluge of communications that I shall probably have no time to answer any of them. I therefore bestow one of my solitary evenings on answering yours beforehand. Bythe-by, you do not yet know where I am, for I defy all the members of the Royal Geographical Society in full conclave to tell you where is the place from which I date this letter. I must inform you, therefore, that it is a village on the

south-west coast of the island of Waigiou, at the north-west extremity of New Guinea. How I came here would be too long to tell, the details I send to my mother and refer you to her. While hon. members are shooting partridges I am shooting, or trying to shoot, birds of paradise-red at that, as our friend Morris Haggar would say. But enough of this nonsense. I meant to write you of matters more worthy of a naturalist's pen. I have been reading of late two books of the highest interest, but of most diverse characters, and I wish to recommend their perusal to you if you have time for anything but work or politics. They are Dr. Leon Dufour's 'Histoire de la Prostitution' and Darwin's' Origin of Species.' If there is an English translation of the first, pray get it. Every student of men and morals should read it, and if many who talk glibly of putting down the 'social evil' were first to devote a few days to its study, they would be both much better qualified to give an opinion and much more diffident of their capacity to deal with it. The work is truly a history, and a great one, and reveals pictures of human nature more wild and incredible than the pen of the romancist ever dared to delineate. I doubt if many classical scholars have an idea of what were really the habits and daily life of the Romans as here delineated. Again I say, read it.

"The other book you may have heard of and perhaps read, but it is not one perusal which will enable any man to appreciate it. I have read it through five or six times, each time with increasing admiration. It will live as long as the 'Principia' of Newton. It shows that nature is, as I before remarked to you, a study that yields to none in grandeur and immensity. The cycles of astronomy or even the periods of geology will alone enable us to appreciate the vast depths of time we have to contemplate in the endeavour to understand the slow growth of life upon the earth. The most intricate effects of the law of gravitation, the mutual disturbances of all the bodies of the solar system, are simplicity itself compared with the intricate relations and complicated struggle which have determined what forms of life shall exist and in what proportions. Mr. Darwin has given the world a new

science, and his name should, in my opinion, stand above that of every philosopher of ancient or modern times. The force of admiration can no further go!!!"

"On board steamer from Ternate to Timor, January 2, 1861.

"I have come home safe to Ternate and left it again. For two months I was stupefied with my year's letters, accounts, papers, magazines, and books, in addition to the manipulation, cleaning, arranging, comparing, and packing for safe transmission to the other side of the world of about 16,000 specimens of insects, birds, and shells. This has been intermingled with the troubles of preparing for new voyages, laying in stores, hiring men, paying or refusing to pay their debts, running after them when they try to run away, going to the town with lists of articles absolutely necessary for the voyage, and finding that none of them could be had for love or money, conceiving impossible substitutes and not being able to get them either,—and all this coming upon me when I am craving repose from the fatigues and privations of an unusually dangerous and miserable voyage, and you may imagine that I have not been in any great humour for letterwriting.

"I think I may promise you that in eighteen months, more or less, we may meet again, if nothing unforeseen occurs.

"Yours,

"A. R. W."

Just before leaving Ternate I also wrote to Bates, chiefly about the "Origin of Species" and some of my results on geographicai distribution.

"DEAR BATES,

"Ternate, December 24, 1860.

Many thanks for your long and interesting letter. I have myself suffered much in the same way as you describe, and I think more severely. The kind of tædium vitæ you mention I also occasionally experience here. I impute it to a too monotonous existence.

"I know not how, or to whom, to express fully my admiration of Darwin's book. To him it would seem flattery, to others self-praise; but I do honestly believe that with however much patience I had worked and experimented on the subject, I could never have approached the completeness of his book, its vast accumulation of evidence, its overwhelming argument, and its admirable tone and spirit. I really feel thankful that it has not been left to me to give the theory to the world. Mr. Darwin has created a new science and a new philosophy; and I believe that never has such a complete illustration of a new branch of human knowledge been due to the labours and researches of a single man. Never have such vast masses of widely scattered and hitherto quite unconnected facts been combined into a system and brought to bear upon the establishment of such a grand and new and simple philosophy.

"I am surprised at your joining the north and south. banks of the lower Amazon into one region. Did you not find a sufficiency of distinct species at Obydos and Barra to separate them from Villa Nova and Santarem? I am now convinced that insects, on the whole, do not give such true indications of zoological geography as birds and mammals, because, first, they have such immensely greater means of dispersal across rivers and seas; second, because they are so much more influenced by surrounding circumstances; and third, because the species seem to change more quickly, and therefore disguise a comparatively recent identity. Thus the insects of adjacent regions, though originally distinct, may become rapidly amalgamated, or portions of the same region may come to be inhabited by very distinct insect-faunas owing to differences of soil, climate, etc. This is strikingly shown here, where the insect-fauna from Malacca to New Guinea has a very large amount of characteristic uniformity, while Australia, from its distinct climate and vegetation, shows a wide difference. I am inclined to think, therefore, that a preliminary study of, first, the mammals, and then the birds, is indispensable to a correct understanding of the