782 The Central Philippines. 
We found at low tide a great number of beach-inhabiting bird- 
on the flats north of Dumaquete. There were many species of curs 
lews, plovers, stilts, sandpipers, oyster catchers, ete., all in flocks 
and most of them probably migrants. After we had procured all 
of these we wished the party divided. Three of us took a native 
boat and sailed across to the little island of Liquijor, where they - 
made a good collection of birds, two or three species of which 
appear to be peculiar to the island. They also found sea shells 
abundant, and among other rarities procured a living pearly nauti- 
lus. The rest of the party went north along the coast of Negros 
and the strait of Tañon, and stopped at the village of Sibulau, near , 
the foot of the mountains. Birds were abundant in the wooded 
ravines, but though we procured many species we had not seen in 
Pauay and Guimaras, they were apparently such as depended upon 
a more favorable location, and not upon a real change of habitat, 
for the hornbills, woodpeckers, tailor-birds, pittas and sun-birds, 
which we had learned to look upon as test species, were identical 
with those from the islands named. 
Hearing of some unexplored mountain lakes to the west of us, 
we made a trip inland in search of them. At a height of fifteen 
hundred feet we reached virgin forest, among which were fine oe 
ferns in abundance. The whole country was steep, but the natives 
were plowing in and cutting off the timber from the steep moun- 
tain sides, and planting them to abaca, the so-called Manila hemp. 
This is a species of banana, and looks so much like those planted 
for their fruit that we had difficulty at first in distinguishing them, 
but the abaca thrives best in a cool and moist situation. We found 
it afterward growing luxuriantly at a height of three thousand feet, 
while those varieties used for food thrive best near sea level and in 
the greatest heat. Like the other bananas, the abaca forms a trank 
from eight to twenty feet high, made up chiefly of the bases of the 
leaves, these wrapped one over the other, and it is these which es 
made use of. They are torn apart, and the outer covering of ae 
outer or convex side is stripped off. This contains the fibre, th 
the rest of the leaf base being made of large watery cells. It 2% 
drawn through a wide machine made on the spot by the awe 
cultivator. This has wooden jaws, between which the watery - 
among the fibre are torn and pressed out while the fibre is drawn 
