The six years' delay in publishing my travels thus enables me to give
what I hope may be an interesting and instructive sketch of the main
results yet arrived at by the study of my collections; and as the
countries I have to describe are not much visited or written about, and
their social and physical conditions are not liable to rapid change, I
believe and hope that my readers will gain much more than they will
lose by not having read my book six years ago, and by this time perhaps
forgotten all about it.
I must now say a few words on the plan of my work.
My journeys to the various islands were regulated by the seasons and
the means of conveyance. I visited some islands two or three times at
distant intervals, and in some cases had to make the same voyage four
times over. A chronological arrangement would have puzzled my readers.
They would never have known where they were, and my frequent references
to the groups of islands, classed in accordance with the peculiarities
of their animal productions and of their human inhabitants, would have
been hardly intelligible. I have adopted, therefore, a geographical,
zoological, and ethnological arrangement, passing from island to island
in what seems the most natural succession, while I transgress the order
in which I myself visited them, as little as possible.
I divide the Archipelago into five groups of islands, as follows:
I. THE INDO-MALAY ISLANDS: comprising the Malay Peninsula and Singapore,
Borneo, Java, and Sumatra.
II. THE TIMOR GROUP: comprising the islands of Timor, Flores, Sumbawa,
and Lombock, with several smaller ones.
III. CELEBES: comprising also the Sula Islands and Bouton.
IV. THE MOLUCCAN GROUP: comprising Bouru, Ceram, Batchian, Gilolo,
and Morty; with the smaller islands of Ternate, Tidore, Makian, Kaioa,
Amboyna, Banda, Goram, and Matabello.
V. THE PAPUAN GROUP: comprising the great island of New Guinea, with
the Aru Islands, Mysol, Salwatty, Waigiou, and several others. The Ke
Islands are described with this group on account of their ethnology,
4