It was absolutely necessary therefore to limit my collections to certain groups to which I could devote constant personal attention, and thus secure from destruction or decay what had been often obtained by much labour and pains.
While Manuel sat skinning his birds of an afternoon, generally surrounded by a little crowd of Malays and Sassaks (as the indigenes of Lombock are termed), he often held forth to them with the air of a teacher, and was listened to with profound attention.

He was very fond of discoursing on the "special providences" of which he believed he was daily the subject.

"Allah has been merciful today," he would say--for although a Christian he adopted the Mahometan mode of speech--"and has given us some very fine birds; we can do nothing without him." Then one of the Malays would reply, "To be sure, birds are like mankind; they have their appointed time to die; when that time comes nothing can save them, and if it has not come you cannot kill them." A murmur of assent follow, until sentiments and cries of "Butul! Butul!" (Right, right.) Then Manuel would tell a long story of one of his unsuccessful hunts--how he saw some fine bird and followed it a long way, and then missed it, and again found it, and shot two or three times at it, but could never hit it, "Ah!" says an old Malay, "its time was not come, and so it was impossible for you to kill it." A doctrine is this which is very consoling to the bad marksman, and which quite accounts for the facts, but which is yet somehow not altogether satisfactory.
It is universally believed in Lombock that some men have the power to turn themselves into crocodiles, which they do for the sake of devouring their enemies, and many strange tales are told of such transformations.
I was therefore rather surprised one evening to hear the following curious fact stated, and as it was not contradicted by any of the persons present, I am inclined to accept it provisionally as a contribution to the Natural History of the island.

A Bornean Malay who had been for many years resident here said to Manuel, "One thing is strange in this country--the scarcity of ghosts." "How so ?" asked Manuel.

"Why, you know," said the Malay, "that in our countries to the westward, if a man dies or is killed, we dare not pass near the place at night, for all sorts of noises are heard which show that ghosts are about.