In A Week I Obtained No Less Than Twenty-Four Species Of Birds,
Which I Had Not Found In The East Of The Island, And In A
Fortnight This Number Increased To Forty Species, Almost All Of
Which Are Peculiar To The Javanese Fauna.
Large and handsome
butterflies were also tolerably abundant.
In dark ravines, and
occasionally on the roadside, I captured the superb Papilio
arjuna, whose wings seem powdered with grains of golden green,
condensed into bands and moon-shaped spots; while the elegantly-
formed Papilio coon was sometimes to be found fluttering slowly
along the shady pathways (see figure at page 201). One day a boy
brought me a butterfly between his fingers, perfectly unhurt. He
had caught it as it was sitting with wings erect, sucking up the
liquid from a muddy spot by the roadside. Many of the finest
tropical butterflies have this habit, and they are generally so
intent upon their meal that they can be easily be reached and
captured. It proved to be the rare and curious Charaxes kadenii,
remarkable for having on each hind wing two curved tails like a
pair of callipers. It was the only specimen I ever saw, and is
still the only representative of its kind in English collections.
In the east of Java I had suffered from the intense heat and
drought of the dry season, which had been very inimical to insect
life. Here I had got into the other extreme of damp, wet, and
cloudy weather, which was equally unfavourable.
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