MY FIRST EXPEDITION TO NEW GUINEA 49 



would be passed round to his friends. The idea was 

 to get the full narcotic value of the tobacco. Now- 

 adays the progress of civilisation has brought cigarettes 

 within easy reach of most Papuans, and a native 

 smoking a pipe is rarely to be encountered. 



It was at Nadi that I encountered for the first time 

 a true Bird of Paradise, that variety which is called 

 the grey-breasted Bird of Paradise. 1 The natives 

 of New Guinea are able to imitate the call of the Bird 

 of Paradise to its mates and thus will lure specimens 

 for the hunter. In my observations of the different 

 species of the true Paradisea (which has extended over 

 some years), I have never known an instance where 

 two kinds of the true Paradisea are to be found in 

 one district. Each particular kind seems to have 

 its own district. Sometimes, however, between one 

 district and another, on the borderland, you may get 

 an intermediate species, having some of the character- 

 istics of the particular birds of the two districts. 



My chief aim, however, in collecting was insects, 

 and not birds. As this was my first collecting trip 

 in New Guinea I was still lacking somewhat in ex- 

 perience, and I cannot chronicle anything really big 

 in the way of a discovery, but I was getting valuable 

 training as to the ways of the natives and the best 

 manner of working with them. One of the things that 



1 This is the rare Paradisea decora, which is entirely restricted 

 to the islands of the D'Entrecasteaux group, and perhaps only to 

 the Fergusson island. E. H. 







