chap, xv.] BIBBS NEAR MACASSAR. 337 



carry my gun or insect-net and make himself generally 

 useful. Ali had hy this time become a pretty good bird- 

 skinner, so that I was fairly supplied with servants. 



I made many excursions into the country, in search of a 

 good station for collecting birds and insects. Some of the 

 villages a few miles inland are scattered about in woody 

 ground which has once been virgin forest, but of which 

 the constituent trees have been for the most part replaced 

 by fruit trees, and particularly by the large palm, Arenga 

 saccharifera, from which wine and sugar are made, and 

 which also produces a coarse black fibre used for cordage. 

 That necessary of life, the bamboo, has also been abun- 

 dantly planted. In such places I found a good many 

 birds, among which were the fine cream-coloured pigeon, 

 Carpophaga luctuosa, and the rare blue-headed roller, 

 Coracias temmincki, which has a most discordant voice, 

 and generally goes in pairs, flying from tree to tree, and 

 exhibiting while at rest that all-in-a-heap appearance and 

 jerking motion of the head and tail which are so charac- 

 teristic of the great Fissirostral group to which it belongs. 

 From this habit alone, the kingfishers, bee-eaters, rollers, 

 trogons, and South American puff-birds, might be grouped 

 together by a person who had observed them in a state of 

 nature, but who had never had an opportunity of examin- 

 ing their form and structure in detail. Thousands of 

 crows, rather smaller than our rook, keep up a constant 



vol. I. z 



