[The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russell Wallace]@TWC D-Link book
The Malay Archipelago

CHAPTER XXXIV
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I was out from ten in the morning till three in the afternoon, and it took me six hours' work at home to pin and set out all the specimens, and to separate the species.

Although T had already been working this shot daily for two months and a half, and had obtained over 800 species of Coleoptera, this day's work added 32 new ones.

Among these were 4 Longicorns, 2 Caribidae, 7 Staphylinidae, 7 Curculionidae, 2 Copridae, 4 Chrysomelidae, 3 Heteromera, 1 Elates, and 1 Buprestis.

Even on the last day I went out, I obtained 10 new species; so that although I collected over a thousand distinct sorts of beetles in a space not much exceeding a square mile during the three months of my residence at Dorey, I cannot believe that this represents one half the species really inhabiting the same spot, or a fourth of what might be obtained in an area extending twenty miles in each direction.
On the 22d of July the schooner Hester Helena arrived, and five days afterwards we bade adieu to Dorey, without much regret, for in no place which I have visited have I encountered more privations and annoyances.
Continual rain, continual sickness, little wholesome food, with a plague of ants and files, surpassing anything I had before met with, required all a naturalist's ardour to encounter; and when they were uncompensated by great success in collecting, became all the more insupportable.

This long thought-of and much-desired voyage to New Guinea had realized none of my expectations.


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