LEARNING TO NAVIGATE 91 



and we camped close to the beach, keeping always 

 a careful watch lest the village butcher should make 

 a sudden call on us. There were in camp my brother, 

 myself and a Mr. Eichhorn, and four New Guinea 

 boys. We did not collect very much at this place in 

 the way of insects, but I discovered several new birds, 

 including a new Pitta and a rare kingfisher. 1 



We suffered from fever very badly at intervals. 

 Perhaps the diet may have had something to do with 

 that. We lived always on tinned meat, rice and 

 flour, with vegetables when we could get them. 

 Alcohol was not used in the camp except for medicine. 



I did not get very much of new Natural History 

 observation at Rossel Island. But there were many 

 things there which I had not seen off the mainland, 

 such as the racket-tailed kingfisher (blue and white). 

 While I was away getting yams and boys for Rossel 

 Island, I left my men on a small island S.E. of St. 

 Aignan, named Kimita. They managed to get there 

 three more males of the blue Ornithoptera. The 

 natives of Rossel Island were very positive about the 

 Ornithoptera being on their island upon my showing 

 them a specimen, but I put no faith in what they said, 

 for to them a small bird is a small bird, and to perhaps 

 a dozen species they give the same name the same, 



1 The Pitta was described by Mr. Rothschild as Pitta meeki, 

 and Mr. Meek discovered also the nest and eggs of this bird, 

 which were described in Nov. Zool., 1899, p. 80. The kingfisher 

 one might say, the most beautiful of the racket-tailed species, 

 is the rare Tanysiptera rosseliana. E. H. 



