Note 16 — Chapter III · COLOMBO

Ceylon is truly a happy hunting-ground for collectors. Thus in March 1889 a German naturalist, Herr Frühstorfer, landed here. He enlisted fourteen collectors to work for him all over the Isle, and in July he departed taking with him a collection of upwards of 25,000 beetles, 7,000 butterflies, 3,000 orthoptera (i.e. ‘straight-winged,’ which includes mantis, leaf-insects, spectre-insects, walking-sticks, grasshoppers, crickets, locusts, &c.), 3,000 dragon-flies, 1,000 spiders and centipedes, and all manner of land and sea snakes; also a fine collection of shells.