67 



Five years ago I spent six months in the Humboldt's Bay 

 district, and quite thirty such shooters were there then, some 

 of whom remained all the year through. Each of these shooters 

 had several natives in his employ, and they would be away in the 

 bush probably three months at a stretch. As the boats call there 

 every month the skins are sent away as quickly as possible, for 

 the agents would not (as Mr. Pratt leads us to suppose) be such 

 fools as to keep these where they quickly deteriorate ; neither 

 would they send to Humboldt's Bay skins collected outside the 

 radius of that port of call. 



The collecting area, moreover, is not so large as Mr. Pratt 

 tries to make the public believe. It is true that " one may sail 

 for forty days among the islands," but not along the Dutch 

 New Guinea coast, and that is where the birds come from. Mr. 

 Pratt speaks of the enormous areas of unexplored land between 

 Kapia and the Princesse Marianne Strait. It is from this part 

 of the country I have just returned, and it may well remain 

 unexploited so far as Paradise Birds are concerned, because it 

 would never pay the shooters to go there. It is out of the region 

 of Paradisea minor, which is certainly not " found on all the 

 Dutch New Guinea coast," as Mr. Pratt states. Its place is 

 here taken by the P. novae-guinae, a far rarer bird, and hitherto 

 not even represented in the British Museum collection. Further 

 south, on the enormous flat regions around Merauke, no Paradise 

 Birds are found at all ; so that even in New Guinea there are vast 

 districts unsuited for them. 



I have never seen or heard any species of the genus Paradise 

 so high up as 4,500 feet. My experience has been that about 

 3,000 feet is quite their highest limit. 



About four years ago I obtained from the Collector of Customs 

 at Dobo in the Arus, the number of skins of the Greater Bird 

 (P. apoda) exported from there the previous year. It amounted 

 roughly to about 1,100. By an arrangement with the traders 

 there, a firm in Makassar now takes the whole of the season's 

 output. When I was staying at Makassar last November- 1 asked 



