242 THE ARU ISLANDS. [chap. xxxi. 



All the men and boys of Aru are expert archers, never 

 stirring -without their bows and arrows. They shoot all 

 sorts of birds, as well as pigs and kangaroos occasionally, 

 and thus have a tolerably good supply of meat to eat with 

 their vegetables. The result of this better living is superior 

 healthiness, well-made bodies, and generally clear skins. 

 They brought me numbers of small birds in exchange for 

 beads or tobacco, but mauled them terribly, notwithstand- 

 ing my repeated instructions. When they got a bird alive 

 they would often tie a string to its leg, and keep it a day 

 or two, till its plumage was so draggled and dirtied as to 

 be almost worthless. One of the first things I got from 

 them was a living specimen of the curious and beautiful 

 racquet-tailed kingfisher. Seeing how much I admired it, 

 they afterwards brought me. several more, which were all 

 caught before daybreak, sleeping in cavities of the rocky 

 banks of the stream. My hunters also shot a few speci- 

 mens, and almost all of them had the red bill more or less 

 clofjEjed with mud and earth. This indicates the habits of 

 the bird, which, though popularly a king-fisher, never 

 catches fish, but lives on insects and minute shells, which 

 it picks up in the forest, darting down upon them from its 

 perch on some low branch. The genus Tanysiptera, to 

 which this bird belongs, is remarkable for the enormously 

 lengthened tail, which in all other kingfishers is small and 

 short. Linnaeus named the species known to him "the 



