560 Birds of Celebes: Pevisteridae. 



chary about setting its foot on the mainland of New Guinea. On small islands, 

 on the other hand, it has been recorded from the Mergui Islands off Tenasserim. 

 it abounds in some of the Nicobars, though, like the Gannets of Euroi)ean 

 seas, it has a favourite breeding-island; it does not occur, as Dr. V order man 

 says, on the mainland of Billiton, but on some small islands near the coast; 

 it has not been met with yet on the mainland of Borneo, but on the small 

 islands of Labuan, Tega and others. Mantanani, Mangsi and Sibutu: it is found 

 on small islands near Macassar (f 1), but has not been recorded from the neigh- 

 bouring coast of Celebes; in the Solomon group Mr. Woodford has noticed, 

 "especially on the island of Malayta, that the Pigeons leave the mainland of the 

 large islands and resort at night in thousands to roost on the small detached 

 islands off the coast". These curious habits, which we have termed insular 

 (of. Myristicivora bicolor, Carpophaqa coticmnu, Carpophaga picker iugi). Mr. Wallace 

 (f 1) believes to be accounted for in Caloenas by the circumstance that "being 

 a ground feeder it is subject to the attacks of carnivorous quadrupeds, which 

 are not found in the very small islands". In the Solomons Mr. Woodford 

 could only account for it by the supposition that the birds find themselves free 

 from the attacks of the large Monitor Lizards, which are less plentiful there than 

 on the mainland Such enemies are most likely more dangerous to the eggs and 

 nestlings than to the old birds, which look as if they ought to be able to look 

 out for themselves as Avell as the average mainland dwellers; but. it must be 

 confessed that their resorting to small islands to roost shows superior wisdom 

 in taking care of themselves. Of course, if all Pigeons were to adopt insular 

 habits (if only as regards roosting!, it requires no very vivid imagination to see 

 that the result would not be profitable to them. Looking for the origin of this 

 habit in the species which have adopted it, it seems clear that the insular 

 species of Myristicivora and Carpophaga have no structural peculiarities to render 

 them specially adapted to this mode of life; it appears likely that they were 

 species which were getting the worst of the struggle for existence on the main- 

 land, and gradually adopted themselves to the small islands, of which they have 

 become the peculiar inhabitants. 



The wide distribution of this species is due to its traversing spaces of sea 

 by flight. Mr. Hume, as mentioned above, saw flocks of it flying from Battj' 

 Malve out to sea evidently on the way to other islands of the Nicobars. 

 Mr. Whitehead writes (31) that it is "very plentiful on the small islands at 

 some distance from the coast of Borneo. This Pigeon migrates from island to 

 island, and was very common on Pulo Tega in April, where in most months it 

 would be difficult to find a bird". Meyer says it is a common species in the 

 Sangi Islands, yet no other naturalist has succeeded in finding it there; this is 

 probably because it is present there only at certain times. Mr. Wallace (f 1) 

 records a case of one of these birds flying as far as a small coral island, a hundred 

 miles north of New Guinea, with no intervening land. "After the island had 

 been settled a year, and traversed in every direction, the son (of Mr. van 



