INLAND NEW GUINEA 123 



the other, smaller red parroquet, only the tail feathers 

 are used. It is called " Asifa." I counted the centre 

 tail feathers of one chief's head-dress, and found it 

 took twenty-three birds to make. 



My Natural History notes on this district (Inland 

 New Guinea, near the head of the Aroa River, 1903), 

 begin with a note on the very curious Saturnid found 

 there, high on the hills, which spins its web on com- 

 munal lines. A number join together to make a 

 huge web which is sometimes two feet and more 

 across. The natives eat the pupce of this moth, 

 and use the web (which somewhat resembles cloth), 

 as a head-dress to keep out the rain. It is perfectly 

 water-tight. I bred about a dozen of these Saturnids. 1 

 The male hatched out a bright ochraceous tawny and 

 the female a dt 11 drab brown. 



The place was simply astonishing as regards the 

 number of species of moths. It was difficult to take 

 two insects of the same species consecutively, any 

 one night. Of the purple-shouldered Papilio weiskei 

 I took a very large number. 



There were, I soon found, several distinct species 

 of Ornithoptera : the goliath and meridionalis, then 

 two species apparently perfectly distinct of the form 

 that resembles cassandra. We took at first two of 

 one and one of the other, and what I took for a 

 female of the latter resembling almost exactly the 

 female of goliath. One species has four small gold 

 1 The Saturnid is Opodiphthera sciron, Westw. (1881). K. J, 



