460 The Aru Islands. 



variety of man, and had the honor of affording to them, in ray 

 own person, an attractive exhibition gratis. 



All the men and boys of Aru are expert archers, never stir- 

 ring without their bows and arrows. They shoot all sorts of 

 birds, as well as pigs and kangaroos occasionally, and thus 

 have a tolerably good supply of meat to eat with their vege- 

 tables. 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 maiiled them terribly, notwithstanding my repeated in- 

 structions. 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 them was a living specimen of the 

 curious and beautiful racquet-tailed kingfisher. Seeing how 

 much I admired it, they afterward brought me several more, 

 which were all caught before daybreak, sleei:)ing 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 

 bi-anch. 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 distin- 

 guished by careful comparison. One of the rarest, however, 

 which inhabits New Guinea, is very distinct from the rest, be- 

 ing 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 305. 



