114 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ORNITHOLOGY OF INDIA. 



(such as he had never seen near the island before or since) so 

 terrified or exhausted that he picked up and took home several 

 of them to the light-house to show to his wife. Mixed with 

 these were a certain number of pigeons, parrots, and other land- 

 birds, but the great majority were Petrels, Terns, Whale-birds, 

 and such like sea-fowl with which his experience as a sailor in 

 southern seas had made him familiar. 



Most of these birds ultimately recovered and left the island, 

 but many of them hung about it for weeks, and for many days 

 remained so tame that they would not move from the ground 

 or the rocks, where they happened to alight, to make way for 

 the keeper or his men. 



Fancy telling a story like this to a party of rampant orni- 

 thologists dead upon sea-birds especially, and who, during their 

 whole trip, had failed to secure a single specimen ! 



Mr. Hawkins also told us that at certain seasons of the year a 

 great yellowish white and black fruit-pigeon (Carpophaga bicolor, 

 of course), is so abundant that he often- shoots a dozen in a 

 morning; with these are associated numbers of the Green Im- 

 perial and Yellow-winged Green Pigeons. He also described 

 a brown, hen-like bird, which he had occasionally shot, and 

 which, although it may have been merely one of the wild hens 

 from the neighbouring Cocos, still, from what he said of the large 

 feet and red skin about the face, seemed to savour strangely of 

 the Megapod, and this suspicion gains strength from the fact 

 that on the western shore of the island, where the primeval 

 jungle is still intact, I came upon a mound, which in every 

 respect resembled, so far as external appearance went, the 

 mounds that I had so closely examined at Galatea Bay. 



A tiny semi-detached peninsular of Table Island is known as 

 Slipper Island, and beyond this is visible, still nearly intact, 

 the wreck of the Jamsetjee Cursetjee Bottlebhoy, firmly jam- 

 med on the fringing reef. 



In October 1867, Mr. Hawkins (and this I heard from 

 Dr. Rean and others at Port Blair and not from him) was 

 himself the hero of another wreck, during another cyclone. 

 He was then chief officer of the SJiahjehan which had on 

 board 30.0 emigrants. For 48 hours the vessel had been at 

 the mercy of wind and waves, wrapped up in a mist of sea 

 drift and thunder clouds, when she suddenly struck on a 

 rock between the Brothers, near the Little Andaman. There 

 she hung broken backed with 15 fathoms fore and aft, and every- 

 one expecting her to go to pieces every moment. The shock, 

 when she struck, had 'brought the main yard down, smashing 



