Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/117

Rh are very cruel and brutal to the natives; but the Bishop denies it, and says employers are only allowed to give obstreperous natives ten lashes, no more—a good deal no doubt depends on the lashes.

The Professor is also interesting, and has shown me many publications of the Buda-Pesth National Museum—is delighted I have seen that magnificent city; but as these books are in Hungarian, Latin, and other languages, I have not read them. Many plants and insects bearing his name were discovered by him—two butterflies discovered by him, the Queen Victoria and the Empress Elizabeth, are very fine. He is enthusiastic about his work, lived for a time in a clearing in the forest in New Guinea, and has lived with King Peter at Petershafen on Deslacs Island, where he is now returning. He waxed enthusiastic over the great and whole-hearted contributions to Science of my old friend Baron von Mueller, the Explorer and Government Botanist of Victoria, and it would have done the poor old Baron’s heart good to hear how his work was known and appreciated in Hungary as elsewhere. I remember once in Rome, when the Marchese Vitelleschi, President of the Geographical Society there, invited me to the rooms of the Society, the Secretary had in expectation of my coming collected an enormous pile of the Baron’s works, and was quite flushed with excitement to meet any one who had known him.

To Professor Ludwig Biro the dangers from the natives were as nothing; I am sure he would willingly have sacrificed his life in pursuit of some rare plant or insect. He told me a long tale about a curious character who has been living on one of the islands, but who is not there just now, so I cannot have the honour of meeting