Birds of Palawan. 39 



Some weeks afterwards I made friends with a Dusan chief 

 some distance off, and spent a week on a mountain about 

 2000 feet high. On this hill I collected Crijptolopha montis, 

 but no other mountain-species. I should rather doubt if an 

 island like Palawan, which has no land above 6000 feet in 

 altitude, has a very numerous highland fauna. 



The continued rain during the first months of my sojourn 

 in Palawan made preserving large specimens very difficult, 

 most of my birds being obliged to be dried before the fire. 



The accommodation we had to put up with was very bad, 

 the store being placed on the edge of a mud-swamp. I built 

 my bed up with empty oil-cases and planks. At high water 

 the sand inside the shed became quite soft. Numbers of 

 disgusting land-crabs would heave up heaps of wet, stink- 

 ing, black mud during the night all over the store, and often 

 enough you would find a small eruption within a few feet 

 of your bed in the morning. Then there was a peculiar red 

 boiled-looking lobster, which made great heaps all over the 

 place. 



The Chinese smoked opium during a greater part of the 

 day and were all ill with fever; this was only to be ex- 

 pected from the position of their house. All my men and I 

 myself suffered from this several months after we had left 

 the island. 



I will now try to give some account of our collecting- 

 grounds. The coast is fringed with high forest, reaching 

 inland about half a mile ; this fringe is probably left by the 

 natives to break the wind and to shelter their rice-crops. 

 In this forest Megapodes abound, Pittas and Jungle-fowl are 

 plentiful, and, more rarely, that prince of birds, Polyplectron. 

 In the trees above the most numerous are the various species 

 of Pigeons and screaming Parrots, but nearly all the small 

 species in the following list may be met with. 



Behind this band of forest are plains of coarse grass, inha- 

 bited by two species of Quails, Cisticolce, and Centrococcyges ; 

 a few white Egrets attend the Sulu cattle. This sort of 

 scenery continues until you reach the foot of the mountains, 

 no great distance from the coast. When the great rush of 



