As soon as my dwelling was finished, which was neither a long nor a costly job, we slung up three hammocks, and then betook ourselves to prepare a place for insect-catching, the end of the rainy season being the best time for this work. We accordingly cut down a great number of trees, a hard and painful task in this climate, where the sun, drawing up the humidity from all the surrounding marshes, makes one feel as if in a stove or hothouse; but our labours have been abundantly repaid by a rich harvest of specimens. Beetles of the longicorn tribe abound here; and to-day I have filled a box with more than a thousand new or rare insects. I have even been fortunate enough to replace some of the more valuable kinds which were destroyed or injured by sea-water on board the ‘Sir James Brooke.’ The villagers come every day to bring me “beasts,” as they call them, grasshoppers, scorpions, serpents, tortoises, &c., all presented to me at the end of a stick. [Illustration: Drawn by M. Sabatier, from a Sketch by M. Mouhot. LAOTIAN HOUSE.] The sanitary condition of the place is dreadful. The rains are now less abundant, and the river has fallen more than twenty feet. They tell me that at Boatioume it is so narrow that the branches of the trees on the two banks touch and form an arch overhead. The mountains are of calcareous rock, and are covered with a fertile vegetation, but everywhere bear the traces of the water which anciently covered them. From the top you can imagine the former limits of the ocean, and see that the plain to the south was then submerged, and that all these heights formed capes or islands. I found close to their base, under a stratum of soil, banks of fossil coral and sea-shells in a good state of preservation. THE HEAT DIMINISHED. The north wind now makes itself frequently felt, although the south-east and south-west winds resume their sway at times, and bring back the rain; but the heat of the nights gradually diminishes, and now, after three o’clock in the morning, I can bear a covering, and am glad to wrap myself in my burnous. My two men suffer occasionally from attacks of intermittent fever, and often complain of cold in the stomach; indeed, death lays so many snares for us here, that he who escapes may think himself lucky. At last we breathe a pure and delicious air. It is now mid winter; since the day before yesterday a fresh north wind has blown, and at night the thermometer has gone back to 18° centigrade. All the evening I have been walking by the river, wrapped in a warm burnous, with the hood up; and this is a pleasure I have not enjoyed since I was at Phrabat, two years ago. PHRAI AND DENG.