by a horny black plate, furrowed across and somewhat prehensile. The whole
tongue has a considerable extensile power. I will here relate something of the
habits of this bird, with which I have since become acquainted. It frequents the
lower parts of the forest, and is seen singly, or at most two or three together. It
flies slowly and noiselessly, and may be killed by a comparatively slight wound.
It eats various fruits and seeds, but seems more particularly attached to the
kernel of the kanary-nut, which grows on a lofty forest tree (Canarium
commune), abundant in the islands where this bird is found; and the manner in
which it gets at these seeds shows a correlation of structure and habits, which
would point out the "kanary" as its special food. The shell of this nut is so
excessively hard that only a heavy hammer will crack it; it is somewhat
triangular, and the outside is quite smooth. The manner in which the bird opens
these nuts is very curious. Taking one endways in its bill and keeping it firm by
a pressure of the tongue, it cuts a transverse notch by a lateral sawing motion of
the sharp-edged lower mandible. This done, it takes hold of the nut with its foot,
and biting off a piece of leaf retains it in the deep notch of the upper mandible,
and again seizing the nut, which is prevented from slipping by the elastic tissue
of the leaf, fixes the edge of the lower mandible in the notch, and by a powerful
nip breaks of a piece of the shell, again taking the nut in its claws, it inserts the
very long and sharp point of the bill and picks out the kernel, which is seized
hold of, morsel by morsel, by the extensible tongue. Thus every detail of form
and structure in the extraordinary bill of this bird seems to have its use, and we
may easily conceive that the black cockatoos have maintained themselves in
competition with their more active and more numerous white allies, by their
power of existing on a kind of food which no other bird is able to extract from its
stony shell. The species is the Microglossum aterrimum of naturalists.
During the two weeks which I spent in this little settlement, I had good
opportunities of observing the natives at their own home, and living in their
usual manner. There is a great monotony and uniformity in everyday savage life,
and it seemed to me a more miserable existence than when it had the charm of
novelty. To begin with the most important fact in the existence of uncivilized
peoples—their food—the Aru men have no regular supply, no staff of life, such
as bread, rice, mandiocca, maize, or sago, which are the daily food of a large
proportion of mankind. They have, however, many sorts of vegetables, plantains,
yams, sweet potatoes, and raw sago; and they chew up vast quantities of sugar-
cane, as well as betel-nuts, gambir, and tobacco. Those who live on the coast
have plenty of fish; but when inland, as we are here, they only go to the sea
occasionally, and then bring home cockles and other shell-fish by the boatload.