III.] NEIF BIRDS. 



the stalls ; the little piles of spears leant up against the corners of 

 the attap sheds; the Chinamen with their large Bornean hats 

 sitting behind their shelves of " notions "; the swarms of butterflies 

 hovering over the dSris of jack-fruit husks and the like, together 

 formed a scene which was always novel and amusing. No descrip- 

 tion that I could give would convey to my reader any idea of its 

 busy life and brilliant colouring. 



Mr. Burbidge, who paid a short visit to Sulu a few years ago, 

 mentions the fact of some of the natives being provided with shirts 

 of chain armour.^ In spite of our being on the look-out for them 

 we saw very few, but at a later period we succeeded in obtaining 

 two. They were without the brass breastplate described by Mr. 

 Burbidge. These articles are undoubtedly of European manu- 

 facture, and it is extremely probable that they were taken in 

 bygone years by the Sulus from their old enemies the Spaniards. 

 Where spear and kris are as yet unsupplanted by the rifle, as is 

 the case among these islands, they must, I should think, be 

 extremely useful. 



Our ornitholosfical rambles during this, our second visit to 

 Meimbun were productive of several species which we had not 

 previously obtained; among others of two or three rare pigeons. 

 Of all parts of the world the New Guinea region is perhaps the 

 richest in these birds, but we found them tolerably abundant here, 

 and obtained no less than eleven different kinds. But our greatest 

 prizes were two birds hitherto unknown to ornithologists. The 

 first, a bush-shrike of brilliant colouring, with the head and 

 shoulders shining bluish-black and the rest of the plumage bright 

 orange-yellow, I afterwards named after the yacht (Pcricrocotus 

 niarcliescc, vide Frontispiece, vol. i.) The other bird {Macronus 

 hettlcwdli), a babbler, with a curious tuft of white, hair-like feathers 

 springing from the back, was an interesting sjDCcies, of which we 

 unfortunately obtained a single specimen only.^ 



1 "The Gardens of the Sun," p. 206. 



2 Vide paper by the author, A Provisional List of the Birds inhabiting the Sulu 

 Archipelago, "Proc. Zool. Soc." 1885, p. 247. 



