NEW GUINEA AND THE PAPUANS 395 



round this bank, and the whole is protected from the 

 sun or rain by a domed construction which completely 

 covers and surrounds it, except for an entrance at one 

 side. 



The brilliant and singular racquet-tailed kingfishers 

 {Tanysiptera) are almost as much Moluccan as Papuan, 

 but the same cannot be said of the brush-toiigued lories, 

 which, of many species and varied coloration, have their 

 true home in Western New Guinea. The parrot family 

 is here extraordinarily rich in genera and mimerous in 

 species, and includes the great black cockatoo {Micro- 

 glossus), and the pigmy parrots {Nasiterna), some of 

 which are under four inches in extreme length. The 

 absence of predatory mammalia has permitted the 

 cassowary — unlike most of the Puttitm — to live in the 

 forests, and for the same reasons we find stately ground 

 pigeons (Goura), as large as small turkeys, to be ex- 

 ceedingly abundant. 



Eeptiles on the wliole are not very numerous, either 

 specifically or individually. The widespread Crocodilus 

 porosus abounds in the southern part of the island, but is 

 seldom seen in the north. The fresh-water tortoises 

 are for the most part either allied to or identical with 

 Australian forms, although the recently-discovered 

 CarestocJielys — a species with the paddle-shaped feet of 

 the oceanic turtles and without the usual horny plates of 

 the carapace — is peculiar and distinctly un-Australian. 

 Of the Monitors — a widely-distributed family, but perhaps 

 attaining their greatest development in Australia— there 

 are six species, of which half that number are peculiar. 

 Of other lizards there are about fifty species, the Agamas 

 being especially well represented. But here, as among the 

 Chelonians and the Snakes, a foreign element is present 

 in the genus Gonioccphalus, which may be regarded as 



