cover the island of Ceram, feeding chiefly on fallen fruits,
and on insects or Crustacea. The female lays from three
to five large and beautifully shagreened green eggs upon
a bed of leaves, the male, and female sitting upon them
alternately for about a month. This bird is the helmeted
cassowary (Casuarius galeatus) of naturalists, and was for
a long time the only species known. Others have since
been discovered in New Guinea, New Britain, and North
Australia.
I t was in the Moluccas that I first discovered undoubted
cases of “ mimicry” among birds, and these are so curious
that I must briefly describe them. I t will be as well,
however, first to explain what is meant by mimicry in
natural history. At page 205 of the first volume of this
work, I have described a butterfly which, when at rest, so
closely resembles a dead leaf, that it thereby escapes
the attacks of its enemies. This is termed a I protective
resemblance.” If however the butterfly, being itself a
savoury morsel to birds, had closely resembled another
butterfly which was disagreeable to birds, and therefore
never eaten by them, it would be as well protected as if it
resembled a leaf; and this is what has been happily termed
“ mimicry ” by Mr. Bates, who first discovered the object
of these curious external imitations. of one insect by another
belonging to a distinct genus or family, and sometimes
even to a distinct order. The clear-winged moths
which resemble wasps and hornets are the best examples
of “ mimicry ” in our own country.
For a long time all the known cases of exact resemblance
of one creature to quite a different one were confined
to insects, and it was therefore with great pleasure
that I discovered in the island of Bouru two birds which I
constantly mistook for each other, and which yet belonged
to two distinct and somewhat distant families. One of
these is a honeysucker named Tropidorhynchus bouruensis,
and the other a kind of oriole, which has been called Mimeta
bouruensis. The oriole resembles the honeysucker in the
following particulars : the upper and under surfaces of the
two birds are exactly of the same tints of dark and light
brown ; the Tropidorhynchus has a large bare black patch
round the eyes ; this is copied in the Mimeta by a patch of
black feathers. The top of the head of the Tropidorbyn-
chus has a scaly appearance from the narrow scale-formed
feathers, which are imitated by the broader feathers of the
Mimeta having a dusky line down each. The Tropidorhynchus
has a pale ruff formed of curious recurved
feathers on the nape (which has given the whole genus the
name of Friar birds); this is represented in the Mimeta by
a pale band in the same position. Lastly, the bill of the
Tropidorhynchus is raised into a protuberant keel at the
base, and the Mimeta has the same character, although it is
not a common one in the genus. The result is, that on a