PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



CHAPTER I 



The British Ornithologists' Union — Members of the Expedition- 

 Voyage to Java — Choice of Rivers — Prosperity of Java — Half- 

 castes — Obsequious Javanese — The Rijst-tafel — Customs of the 

 Dutch — Buitcnzorg Garden — Garoct. 



In the autumn of 1858 a small party of naturalists, most 

 of them members of the University of Cambridge and 

 their friends and all of them interested in the study of 

 ornithology, met in the rooms of the late Professor Alfred 

 Newton at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and agreed to 

 found a society with the principal object of producing a 

 quarterly Journal of general ornithology. The Journal 

 was called " The Ibis," and the Society adopted the name 

 of British Ornithologists' Union, the number of members 

 being originally limited to twenty. 



In the autumn of 1908 the Society, which by that 

 time counted four hundred and seventy members, adopted 

 the suggestion, made by Mr. W. R. Ogilvie-Grant, of 

 celebrating its jubilee by sending an expedition to explore, 

 chiefly from an ornithological point of view, the unknow^n 

 range of Snow Mountains in Dutch New Guinea. A 

 Committee, whose Chairman was Mr. F. D. Godman, 

 F.R.S., President and one of the surviving original 

 members of the Society, was appointed to organise the 

 expedition, and subscriptions were obtained from 



