occasionally, and thus have a tolerably good supply of meat to eat with their
vegetables. The result of this better living is superior healthiness, well-made
bodies, and generally clear skins. They brought me numbers of small birds in
exchange for beads or tobacco, but mauled them terribly, notwithstanding my
repeated instructions. When they got a bird alive they would often tie a string to
its leg, and keep it a day or two, till its plumage was so draggled and dirtied as to
be almost worthless. One of the first things I got from there was a living
specimen of the curious and beautiful racquet-tailed kingfisher. Seeing how
much I admired it, they afterwards brought me several more, which wore all
caught before daybreak, sleeping in cavities of the rocky banks of the stream.
My hunters also shot a few specimens, and almost all of them had the red bill
more or less clogged with mud and earth. This indicates the habits of the bird,
which, though popularly a king-fisher, never catches fish, but lives on insects
and minute shells, which it picks up in the forest, darting down upon them from
its perch on some low branch. The genus Tanysiptera, to which this bird belongs,
is remarkable for the enormously lengthened tail, which in all other kingfishers
is small and short. Linnaeus named the species known to him "the goddess
kingfisher" (Alcedo dea), from its extreme grace and beauty, the plumage being
brilliant blue and white, with the bill red, like coral. Several species of these
interesting birds are now known, all confined within the very limited area which
comprises the Moluccas, New Guinea, and the extreme North of Australia. They
resemble each other so closely that several of them can only be distinguished by
careful comparison. One of the rarest, however, which inhabits New Guinea, is
very distinct from the rest, being bright red beneath instead of white. That which
I now obtained was a new one, and has been named Tanysiptera hydrocharis, but
in general form and coloration it is exactly similar to the larger species found in
Amboyna, and figured at page 468 of my first volume.
New and interesting birds were continually brought in, either by my own boys
or by the natives, and at the end of a week Ali arrived triumphant one afternoon
with a fine specimen of the Great Bird of Paradise. The ornamental plumes had
not yet attained their full growth, but the richness of their glossy orange
colouring, and the exquisite delicacy of the loosely waving feathers, were
unsurpassable. At the same time a great black cockatoo was brought in, as well
as a fine fruit-pigeon and several small birds, so that we were all kept hard at
work skinning till sunset. Just as we had cleared away and packed up for the
night, a strange beast was brought, which had been shot by the natives. It
resembled in size, and in its white woolly covering, a small fat lamb, but had
short legs, hand-like feet with large claws, and a long prehensile tail. It was a