He accompanied me through all my travels, sometimes alone, but more frequently with several others, and was then very useful in teaching them their duties, as he soon became well acquainted with my wants and habits. During our residence at Ternate he married, but his wife lived with her family, and it made no difference in his accompanying me wherever I went till we reached Singapore on my way home. parting, besides a present in money, I gave him my two double-barrelled guns and whatever ammunition I had, with a lot of surplus stores, tools, and sundries, which made him quite rich. He here, for the first time, adopted European clothes, which did not suit him nearly so well as his native dress, and thus clad a friend took a very good photograph of him. I therefore now present his likeness to my readers as that of the best native servant I ever had, and the faithful companion of almost all my journeyings among the islands of the far East.

The two birds of paradise which I had purchased gave me a good deal of trouble and anxiety on my way home. I had first to make an arrangement for a place to stand the large cage on deck. A stock of food was required, which consisted chiefly of bananas; but to my surprise I found that they would eat cockroaches greedily, and as these abound on . every ship in the tropics, I hoped to be able to obtain a good supply. Every evening I went to the storeroom in the fore part of the ship, where I was allowed to brush the cockroaches into a biscuit tin. The ship stayed three or four days at Bombay to discharge and take in cargo, coal, etc., and all the passengers went to a hotel, so I brought the birds on shore and stood them on the hotel verandah, where they were a great attraction to visitors. While staying at Bombay a small party of us had the good fortune to visit the celebrated cave-temple of Elephanta on a grand festival day, when it was crowded with thousands of natives-men, women, and children, in ever-changing crowds, kneeling or praying before the images or the altars, making gifts to the gods or the priests, and outside cooking and eating-a most characteristic and striking scene.

The journey to Suez offered no particular incident, and the birds continued in good health; as did two or three lories I had brought. But with the railway journey to Alexandria difficulties began. It was in February, and the night was clear and almost frosty. The railway officials made difficulties, and it was only by representing the rarity and value of the birds that I could have the cage placed in a boxtruck. When we got into the Mediterranean the weather became suddenly cold, and worse still, I found that the ship was free from cockroaches. As I thought that animal food was perhaps necessary to counteract the cold, I felt afraid for the safety of my charge, and determined to stay a fortnight at Malta in order to reach England a little later, and also to lay in a store of the necessary food. I accordingly arranged to break my voyage there, went to a hotel, and found that I could get unlimited cockroaches at a baker's close by.

At Marseilles I again had trouble, but at last succeeded in getting them placed in a guard's van, with permission to enter and feed them en route. Passing through France it was a sharp frost, but they did not seem to suffer; and when we reached London I was glad to transfer them into the care of Mr. Bartlett, who conveyed them to the Zoological Gardens. Thus ended my Malayan travels.

CHAPTER XXIII

LIFE IN LONDON, 1862-1871-SCIENTIFIC AND

LITERARY WORK

ON reaching London in the spring of 1862 I went to live with my brother-in-law, Mr. Thomas Sims, and my sister Mrs. Sims, who had a photographic business in Westbourne Grove. Here, in a large empty room at the top of the house, I brought together all the collections which I had reserved for myself and which my agent, Mr. Stevens, had taken care of for me. I found myself surrounded by a quantity of packing-cases and storeboxes, the contents of many of which I had not seen for five or six years, and to the examination and study of which I looked forward with intense interest.

From my first arrival in the East I had determined to keep a complete set of certain groups from every island or distinct locality which I visited for my own study on my return home, as I felt sure they would afford me very valuable materials for working out the geographical distribution of animals in the archipelago, and also throw light on various other problems. These various sets of specimens were sent home regularly with the duplicates for sale, but either packed separately or so distinctly marked "Private " that they could be easily put aside till my return home. The groups thus reserved were the birds, butterflies, beetles, and land-shells, and they amounted roughly to about three thousand bird skins of about a thousand species, and, perhaps, twenty thousand beetles and butterflies of about seven thousand species.

As I reached home in a very weak state of health, and could not work long at a time without rest, my first step was to purchase the largest and most comfortable easy-chair I could find in the neighbourhood, and then engage a car

penter to fit up one side of the room with movable deal shelves, and to make a long deal table, supported on trestles, on which I could unpack and assort my specimens. In order to classify and preserve my bird skins I obtained from a manufacturer about a gross of cardboard boxes of three sizes, which, when duly labelled with the name of the genus or family, and arranged in proper order upon the shelves, enabled me to find any species without difficulty. For the next month I was fully occupied in the unpacking and arranging of my collections, while I usually attended the evening meetings of the Zoological, Entomological, and Linnæan Societies, where I met many old friends and made several news ones, and greatly enjoyed the society of people interested in the subjects that now had almost become the business of my life.

As soon as I began to study my birds I had to pay frequent visits to the bird-room of the British Museum, then in charge of Mr. George Robert Gray, who had described many of my discoveries as I sent them home, and also to the library of the Zoological Society to consult the works of the older ornithologists. In this way the time passed rapidly, and I became so interested in my various occupations, and saw so many opportunities for useful and instructive papers on various groups of my birds and insects, that I came to the conclusion to devote myself for some years to this work, and to put off the writing of a book on my travels till I could embody in it all the more generally interesting results derived from the detailed study of certain portions of my collections. This delay turned out very well, as I was thereby enabled to make my book not merely the journal of a traveller, but also a fairly complete sketch of the whole of the great Malayan Archipelago from the point of view of the philosophic naturalist. The result has been that it long continued to be the most popular of my books, and that even now, thirty-six years after its publication, its sale is equal to that of any of the others.

Having, as already described, brought home two living birds of paradise, which were attracting much notice at the