NEW GUINEA AND THE PAPUANS 
395 
round this bank, and the whole is protected from the 
sun or rain by a domed construction which completely 
covers and surrounds it, except for an entrance at one 
side. 
The brilliant and singular racquet-tailed kingfishers 
{Tanysiptera) are almost as much Moluccan as Papuan, 
but the same cannot be said of the brush-tongued lories, 
which, of many species and varied coloration, have their 
true home in Western New Guinea. The parrot family 
is here extraordinarily rich in genera and numerous in 
species, and includes the great black cockatoo {Micro- 
glossus ), and the pigmy parrots (. Nasiterna ), some of 
which are under four inches in extreme length. The 
absence of predatory mammalia has permitted the 
cassowary—unlike most of the Eatitce —to live in the 
forests, and for the same reasons we find stately ground 
pigeons {Gout a), as large as small turkeys, to be ex¬ 
ceedingly abundant. 
Reptiles on the whole are not very numerous, either 
specifically or individually. The widespread Crocodilus 
porosus abounds in the southern part of the island, but is 
seldom seen in the north. The fresh-water tortoises 
are for the most part either allied to or identical with 
Australian forms, although the recently-discovered 
Garestochelys —a species with the paddle-shaped feet of 
the oceanic turtles and without the usual horny plates of 
the carapace—is peculiar and distinctly un-Australian. 
Of the Monitors—a widely-distributed family, but perhaps 
attaining their greatest development in Australia—there 
are six species, of which half that number are peculiar. 
Of other lizards there are about fifty species, the Agamas 
being especially well represented. But here, as among the 
Ohelonians and the Snakes, a foreign element is present 
in the genus Goniocephalus, which may be regarded as 
