134 A NATURALIST IN CANNIBAL LAND 



themselves. There are some tribes on the island 

 that are in a way outcasts, and live in the bush. 

 They are hunted down by the people who live in the 

 villages. There is no difference that I could notice 

 between the tribes who live in the villages and these 

 outcasts who are driven into the bush, but the village 

 people will not allow the bush people to settle down 

 and make gardens. The people who live in the bush 

 have therefore to live by hunting and fishing. I used 

 to do a great deal of fishing for the natives with 

 dynamite. 



At Choiseul I discovered a very wonderful bird, 

 which the Hon. Walter Rothschild names after me 

 Microgoura meeki. It is a kind of crested ground- 

 pigeon and was my best discovery so far in Natural 

 History. 



After Choiseul I made my way to Rendova Island 

 (1904), where I stayed some six or nine weeks. Here 

 the collecting was fairly good and I got a new speci- 

 men of Troides called the Troides rubianus, which 

 is darker in appearance than the Troides victoriae. 

 There was a strange Natural History specimen here 

 that I encountered, but I was not able to collect for 

 Tring Museum a very small and very old native, 

 covered all over with red hair. He was reputed by 

 the natives to have already reached a fabulous age, 

 and they stated that " he was never going to die." 



After staying in the British Solomons for some 

 eight months I sent away my collections, and went 



