Chap, xiv.] VARIOUS BIRDS. 3O-' 



residents. At the time of our visit there were also in the place 

 others belonging to a small Mission Steamer intended for New 

 Guinea, and the skippers of two vessels employed in the pearl 

 shell trade. 



The country is wooded in every direction, but with con- 

 stantly recurring open patches covered with scattered acacias, 

 gum trees, and Proteaceae with grass only growing beneath. 

 In the dense woods, with their tall forest trees and tangled 

 masses of creepers, one might for a moment imagine oneself 

 back in Fiji or Api, but the characteristic opens, with scattered 

 Eucalpyti, remind one at once that one is in Australia. The 

 principal features of Australian and Indian vegetation, are, as 

 it were, dovetailed into one another. 



In the woods, the tree trunks are covered with climbing 

 aroids, and often with orchids. Two palms, an Areca with a 

 tall slender stem not thicker than a man's wrist, but fifty feet 

 high, and a most beautiful Caryota, strong evidence of Indian 

 affinities in the flora, are abundant. The Cocoanut Palm, as 

 is well known, is not found anywhere growing naturally in 

 Australia, though it is abundant in islands not far from Cape 

 York. At Cape York some trees had been planted, but they 

 appear not to thrive. One of these, already more than eight 

 years old, at which age it ought to have been bearing fruit, had 

 as yet a trunk only a few feet in height. A Rattan Palm, trail- 

 ing everywhere between the underwood, is a terrible opponent, 

 as one tries to creep through the forest in search of birds. 



The number and variety of birds at Cape York is astonishing. 

 Two species of Ptilotis {P. crysotis and P. filigera), different 

 from those at Fiji, but closely resembling them, suck the honey 

 from, or search for insects on, the scarlet blossoms of the same 

 Erythrina tree as that at Fiji. With these are to be seen a 

 Myzomela, and the gorgeous little brush-tongued Paroquet 

 {Trichog/ossus Swainsonii), which flies screaming about in small 

 flocks, and gathers so much honey from the flowers, that it 

 fairly pours out of the bird's beak when it falls shot to the 

 ground. x\mongst the same flowers is to be seen also a true 

 Honey-bird {Nectarinia frenata), with brilliant metallic blue 

 tints on its throat. 



The common white-crested Cockatoo {Camfua gakrita) is 

 here wary and difficult to get near, though not so much so as 

 in the frequented parts of Victoria. The great black Cockatoo 

 {Microglossum aterrimiim) is to be found at Cape York, but I 

 did not manage to see one. The Pheasant Cuckoo {Centropus 

 phasiauus) rises occasionally from the long grass in the opens, 

 and though of the cuckoo tribe, has exactly the appearance of 

 a pheasant when on the wing. 



