The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

XXIV.] BATCHIAN. 257having a much greater variety of savoury dishes than theMalays. Here, tliey live chiefly on sago as bread, with a littlerice occasionally, and abundance of vegetables and fruit.It is a curious fact that everywhere in the East where thePortuguese have mixed with the native races they have becomedarker in colour than either of tlie parent stocks. This is thecase almost always with these "Orang Sirani" in the Moluccas,and witli the Portuguese of Malacca. The reverse is the case inSouth America, where the mixture of the Portuguese or Brazilianwith the Indian produces the " Mameluco," who is notunfrequently lighter than either parent, and always lighterthan the Indian. The women at Batchian, although generallyfairer than the men, are coarse in features, and very far inferiorin beauty to the mixed Dutch-Malay girls, or even to manypure Malays.The part of the village in which I resided was a grove ofcocoa-nut trees, and at night, when the dead leaves were sometimescollected together and burnt, the effect was most magnificent—thetall stems, the fine crowns of foliage, and theimmense fruit-clusters, being brilliantly illuminated against adark sky, and appearing like a fairy palace sujDported on ahundred columns, and groined over with leafy arches. Thecocoa-nut tree, when well grown, is certainly the prince ofpalms both for beauty and utility.During my very first Avalk into the forest at Batchian, I hadseen sitting on a leaf out of reach, an immense butterfly of adark colour marked with wliite and yellow spots. I could notcapture it as it flew away high up into the forest, but I at oncesaw that it was a female of a new species of Ornithoptera or"bird-winged butterfly," the pride of the Eastern tropics. Iwas very anxious to get it and to find the male, which in thisgenus is always of extreme beauty. During the two succeedingmonths I only saw it once again, and shortly afterwards I sawthe male flying higli in the air at the mining village. I hadbegun to despair of ever getting a specimen, as it seemed sorare and wild ;till one day, about the beginning of January, Ifound a beautiful shrub with large white leafy bracts andyellow flowers, a species of Mussjenda, and saw one of thesenoble insects hovering over it, but it was too quick for me, andflew away. The next day I went again to the same shrub andsucceeded in catching a female, and the day after a fine male.I found it to be as I had expected, a perfectly new and most magnificentspecies, and one of the most gorgeously coloured butterfliesin the world. Fine specimens of the male are more thanseven inches across tlie wings, which are velvety black and fieryorange, the latter colour replacing the green of the allied species.The beauty and brilliancy of this insect are indescribable, andnone but a naturalist can understand the intense excitement Iexperienced when I at lengtli captui-ed it.On taking it out ofmy net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began to beatS