Collecting-trip in the New Hebrides, &c. 303 
CaSUARIUS BENNETTI. 
In Ferguson’s Bay I was close to one, and its note reminded 
me of an asthmatic old man. The boatswain was the only 
one of us to catch a glimpse of this noble bird. The proper 
native pronunciation of the name has a p, not k, at the end of 
the word. It is “ Moorup,” not “ Mooruk.”’ I found the 
contents of the eggs made capital omelettes, though my two 
messmates could not be induced to touch them, and I had the 
advantage of keeping the shells. The price of an egg was a 
fourpenny knife. We hada tribe of natives engaged to make 
a regular country hunt for us after ‘‘ Moorups ” and kanga- 
roos. They enclose a great extent of the grass-country and 
set fire to it all round, leaving only a narrow opening, through 
which the frightened birds dash, exposed to the spears of the 
hunters. The ‘ Danae’ arrived with the ‘ Renard’s’ sailing- 
orders just before our projected hunt was to take place, and 
so we missed it. 
Mrcaropivs premita, Hartl. 
This bird is a perfect nuisance in Blanche Bay, the whole 
place, both on the grassy flats and the bush-covered hill-sides, 
being so undermined with its nesting-holes, that we were 
continually stumbling into them, notwithstanding all our 
care in walking. Like domestic fowls, they lay indiscrimi- 
nately in each other’s nests. Some of these are regular ex- 
cavations, six or seven feet deep. Going shooting one day, I 
saw two flat white things moving in the mouth of a small 
cavern by the side of the road. Upon closer inspection they 
proved to be the upturned soles of a native’s feet, their owner 
being head downwards, nearly six feet underground. He 
presently emerged with five eggs, which I purchased on 
the spot for a penny stick of tobacco. The consumption of 
eggs by the ‘ Renard’s’ thirty men was something enormous, 
the price alongside being six eggs for one stick of tobacco. 
The birds were very numerous, and when flushed took to 
the trees. From what the natives and white traders told 
me, I think they breed all the year round. I was there 
three months, and the quantity of eggs was practically 
