We have to thank Messrs. Alfred Dent Ca. for a copy of the Britidh North Borneo Herald and Official Gazette for July. Dhe first article in this issue is the begin. ning of an exhaustive account of the mineral resources of Borneo, which goes back to the year 1553, when the Italian navigator Pigafetta was received by the Sultan of Brunei, and was lost in admiration of "the elephants with richly caparisoned housings silk and gold, the doorposts of ivory inlaid with the same precious metal, the golden mounted krises of the Sultan and his pangerans, the wonderfully worked savings of the' chiefs stiff with auriferous embroidery." As all these glories, includ-[ing the elephants, have now disappeared, must admire the agitation of Cap: tain Pigafetta. Subsequent visitors to Borneo, however, have told similar tales about the abundance of gold in. the country; but though the British North Borneo Company has sent out numerous expeditions to find the sources from which this gold was derived, no discoveries of any importance have yet been made.
ixth, and we regret to see the last, instalment of Me. Skertchly's Jungle Notes is devoted to the flowers, the fruits and the butterflies of the Bornean jungle. By the native the great durian, "blessed as the choicest, cursed as the nastiest of all fruits" is most' desired and most enjoyed, Mr. Skertchly tells us "<The fruit which falls is best, and even before daylight the men are off on the early bird principle, sometimes to find the lordly elephant there before them. How that experience startled our Chinese cook. Before the first grey dawn he had risen with guile in his heart, and a watering mouth, while yet the Dysks slept. Then the air was split with barbarous yells, and each man started weapon in hand to face the foe. 'A flying vision of terror. ken Chinese humanity, and a ery of galah (elephant) broke onthe camp, and when Lam Chang felt better he told us how he got to the coveted tree and found a tusker there which looked at him! and he fied."
Every entomologist, in fact, every admirer of these lovely images of the soul, will sympathise with the writer's rhapsody on the butterflies "Tei upon the wings of butterflies thatnature has written and is still writing in each sparkling scale the history of her deepest secrets. Fragile above all the dwellers of the land, each change of climate or condition, each geological throe records itself upon these delicate pages, for him to read who can. Nay more, the deeper secrets of life, the change of species, the growth of i be read in this most lovely of The butterfly's wing is luminated missal."
There are already two Roman Catholic priests working at Sandaken, and one is to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.