that for some months past have been, and which are still being cut down,
and left to dry and decay upon the ground.
Now, during my whole twelve years' collecting in the western and eastern
tropics, I never enjoyed such advantages in this respect as at the
Simunjon coalworks. For several months from twenty to fifty Chinamen and
Dyaks were employed almost exclusively in clearing a large space in the
forest, and in making a wide opening for a railroad to the Sadong River,
two miles distant. Besides this, sawpits were established at various
points in the jungle, and large trees were felled to be cut up into
beams and planks. For hundreds of miles in every direction a magnificent
forest extended over plain and mountain, rock and morass, and I arrived
at the spot just as the rains began to diminish and the daily sunshine
to increase; a time which I have always found the most favourable season
for collecting. The number of openings, sunny places, and pathways were
also an attraction to wasps and butterflies; and by paying a cent each
for all insects that were brought me, I obtained from the Dyaks and the
Chinamen many fine locusts and Phasmidae, as well as numbers of handsome
beetles.
When I arrived at the mines, on the 14th of March, I had collected in
the four preceding months, 320 different kinds of beetles. In less
than a fortnight I had doubled this number, an average of about 24 new
species every day. On one day I collected 76 different kinds, of which
34 were new to me. By the end of April I had more than a thousand
species, and they then went on increasing at a slower rate, so that
I obtained altogether in Borneo about two thousand distinct kinds,
of which all but about a hundred were collected at this place, and on
scarcely more than a square mile of ground. The most numerous and most
interesting groups of beetles were the Longicorns and Rhynchophora, both
pre-eminently wood-feeders. The former, characterised by their graceful
forms and long antenna, were especially numerous, amounting to nearly
three hundred species, nine-tenths of which were entirely new, and many
of them remarkable for their large size, strange forms, and beautiful
colouring. The latter correspond to our weevils and allied groups, and
in the tropics are exceedingly numerous and varied, often swarming upon
dead timber, so that I sometimes obtained fifty or sixty different kinds
in a day. My Bornean collections of this group exceeded five hundred
species.
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