When the sports were over, the Doctor and the boys took a stroll among the rice-fields in the neighborhood of the village; and by the time it was ended the sun was setting. Near the village they crossed a bridge of bamboo, the first of the kind the boys had ever seen, and they examined it with a good deal of curiosity. A couple of the longest and strongest bamboos were thrown over the stream and bound together with thongs of bamboo-leaves twisted together, and a third bamboo served as a hand-rail. From an overhanging tree three or four smaller bamboos were attached to steady the bridge and keep it in place, and it was further upheld by bamboo poles fastened into the bank. The Doctor said there were hundreds of these bridges in Borneo, especially among the mountains; and though they were liable to tremble under the feet of those who crossed them, they were quite secure. The Dyaks find the bamboo no less useful than do the inhabitants of other Eastern countries, and it would be a serious calamity to them if they were suddenly deprived of it. They slept in the head house at night, and were off by dawn on their return to meet the _Osprey_. The Doctor told the boys that if they had had time they would have visited the diamond-fields of the upper Sarawak, where some very fine stones are occasionally secured. The diamond washings are mostly conducted by Chinese, but they are not said to be very profitable; now and then a rich deposit is found, but for the most part the fields of the Sarawak do not more than pay the expense of working them. In other parts of Borneo they are richer, and some very large diamonds have been discovered. While descending the river, the Doctor called attention to a climbing plant that completely covered a tree overhanging the water. "It belongs," said he, "to the family of the pitcher-plants, but is not a very good specimen." One of the boys asked what the pitcher-plant was. "Its name indicates its character," replied the Doctor. "It has a cup, or pitcher, hanging down very much as a pitcher does when you hold it by the handle; some of the plants are literally covered with these pitchers, and they will generally be found full of water, even when there has been no rain for weeks. The finest of them are in the mountain regions of Borneo; there is one known as the Nepenthes Rajah that will hold two quarts of water in its pitcher, and there is another nearly as large. They are of great advantage to travellers, and many a man has been saved from suffering, and perhaps death, by means of this plant." [Illustration: Neocerambyx æneas. Diurus furcellatus. Megacriodes Sanudersii. Cladoguanthus tarandus. Ectatorhinus Wallacei. Cyriopalpus Wallacei. REMARKABLE BEETLES IN BORNEO.]