I04 The American Naturalist. [March, 
ther back and we concluded to make the place our headquarters 
for the month we had devoted to this part of the island. The 
next morning I dressed and started to the governor's residence, 
to present our passports and other papers, but the rest of the 
party, anxious to see what could be found in this new field, 
were in the hills before my arrival, and the reports of 
their heavy guns were rolling down upon the town as if it 
was besieged. A squad of Indian soldiers were hurried 
out after them, and made out to capture one of the party, and 
march him in, just after I had shown our papers, when he was 
released without ceremony. 
The birds, in the jungle of second growth near town, were, 
many of them, the same we had found in other parts of the 
group, but the first day's hunt proved that we had reached, a 
new and distinct location. 
A number of birds, including the large Philippine crow, the 
yellow oriole, the black, and bald headed starlings, the white 
collared kingfisher, one or two sun birds, the fruit-thrushes, and 
the little scarlet breasted parrots, and many others, are such 
common residents about the Indian towns, and especially in 
the coco groves, and are so rarely found in the virgin forest, 
that we learned to expect them everywhere we went. Their 
distribution may have depended in part upon the habit the na- 
tives have of capturing these birds and carrying them from 
place to place. Since the islands have been inhabited there can 
be no doubt that man has been the chief agent of distribution, 
and of much greater importance than storms, floating timber, 
etc., all taken together. 
We had, at a step, passed from the region where the dry 
season was at its height in Negros, Cebu, and Bojol, to where 
the rainy season was beginning. The mountains behind were 
much of the time enveloped in dark mists and thunder clouds 
and. one or two showers had already reached down to the town. 
The steep hills between us and the true forest were wet and 
slippery, and we found our best means of reaching the hunting 
grounds was to employ native boatmen to pilot us up the little 
tidal river in their canoes to the foot of the mountains. The 
