INLAND NEW GUINEA 125 



until I found out how to catch them we got very few. 

 The successful lure was to fix an old specimen on a 

 leaf in the sun with wings outspread; the others 

 could not resist that. It was like attracting parrots 

 with a wounded one of their number. The purple- 

 shouldered Papilio we got only in one place, at a 

 soakage close to the creek bank. The Delias, I found, 

 all feed on mistletoe as caterpillars. It seems all of 

 one kind, but I fancy that, as it grows on the different 

 trees, so it takes slightly different characteristics and 

 forms the food-plant of the several butterflies. 



Regarding birds I noticed that the Pitta found in 

 mountains is different from the red-breasted Eastern 

 Coast species (Pitta loriae), 1 not being so big and 

 having chestnut at the back of the neck and more 

 grey in its cap. I found at Bwoidunna a little tree- 

 bird, similar to a wren, with long flat beak, blue 

 cap, dirty white throat and belly, and chestnut back 

 (lodopsis wallacei). There was also a duck with a 

 curious stiff tail, 2 with mottled markings, and a cuckoo 

 almost exactly similar to the English cuckoo. Yet 

 another bird new to me was neither a Pitta nor a 

 thrush, but had a thick beak somewhat similar to 

 a finch, and was more like a Cardinal bird. It had a 



1 The Pitta is a new form of P. mackloti just described by 

 Mr. Rothschild and myself. E. H. 



2 This duck is the rare Salvadorina waiginensis, Rothsch. & 

 Hart. The cuckoo is Cuculus optatus, Gould, a bird which breeds 

 in Eastern Siberia and passes the winter in Australia and New 

 Guinea. 



