This is one of those spots so hard for the European naturalist to
conceive, where with all the riches of a tropical vegetation, and
partly perhaps from the very luxuriance of that vegetation,
insects are as scarce as in the most barren parts of Europe, and
hardly more conspicuous. In temperate climates there is a
tolerable uniformity in the distribution of insects over those
parts of a country in which there is a similarity in the
vegetation, any deficiency being easily accounted for by the
absence of wood or uniformity of surface. The traveller hastily
passing through such a country can at once pick out a collecting
ground which will afford him a fair notion of its entomology.
Here the case is different. There are certain requisites of a
good collecting ground which can only be ascertained to exist by
some days' search in the vicinity of each village. In some places
there is no virgin forest, as at Djilolo and Sahoe; in others
there are no open pathways or clearings, as here. At Batchian
there are only two tolerable collecting places,--the road to the
coal mines, and the new clearings made by the Tomóre people, the
latter being by far the most productive. I believe the fact to be
that insects are pretty uniformly distributed over these
countries (where the forests have not been cleared away), and are
so scarce in any one spot that searching for them is almost
useless. If the forest is all cleared away, almost all the
insects disappear with it; but when small clearings and paths are
made, the fallen trees in various stages of drying and decay, the
rotting leaves, the loosening bark and the fungoid growths upon
it, together with the flowers that appear in much greater
abundance where the light is admitted, are so many attractions to
the insects for miles around, and cause a wonderful accumulation
of species and individuals. When the entomologist can discover