holding up a bird, which he handed to me, saying with
great satisfaction, “ How I owe you nothing.” These were
remarkable and quite unexpected instances of honesty
among savages, where it would have been very easy for
them to have been dishonest without fear of detection or
punishment.
The country round about Bessir was very hilly and
rugged, bristling with jagged and honey-combed coralline
rocks, and with curious little chasms and ravines.
The paths often passed through these rocky clefts, which
in the depths of the forest were gloomy and dark in the
extreme, and often full of fine-leaved herbaceous plants
and curious blue-foliaged Lycopodiacese. It was in such
places as these that I obtained many of my most beautiful
small butterflies, such as Sospita statira and Taxila
pulchra, the gorgeous blue Amblypodia hercules, and many
others. On the skirts of the plantations I found the handsome
blue Deudorix despoena, and in the shady woods the
lovely Lycaena wallacei. Here, too, I obtained the beautiful
Thyca aruna, of the richest orange on the upper side,
while below it is intense crimson and glossy black; and
a superb specimen of a green Ornithoptera, absolutely
fresh and perfect, and which still remains one of the
glories of my cabinet.
My collection of birds, though not very rich in number
of species, was yet very interesting. I got another specimen
of the rare Hew Guinea kite (Henicopernis longi-
cauda), a large new goatsucker (Podargus superciliaris),
and a most curious ground-pigeon of an entirely new genus,
and remarkable for its long and powerful bill. It has
been named Henicophaps albifrons. I was also much
pleased to obtain a fine series of a large fruit-pigeon with
a protuberance on the bill (Carpophaga tumida), and to
ascertain that this was not, as had been hitherto supposed,
a sexual character, but was found equally in male and
female birds. I collected only seventy-three species of
birds in Waigiou, but twelve of them were entirely new,
and many others very rare; and as I brought away with
me twenty-four fine specimens of the Paradisea rubra, I
did not regret my visit to the island, although it had by
no means answered my expectations.