me grossly unwieldy, and the whole body is covered
with thick yellow fat, and the flesh has the strong sweet taste of the
papaw. At this time, so the natives say, they are actually unable to
rise for flight, and are easily captured by the women and children at
work in the banana and taro plantations.

(Apropos of this common tendency of the flesh of birds to acquire the
taste of their principal article of food, I may mention that in those
Melanesian Islands where the small Chili pepper grows wild, the pigeons
at certain times of the year feed almost exclusively upon the ripe
berries, and their flesh is so pungent as to be almost uneatable. At
one place on the littoral of New Britain, there is a patch of country
covered with pepper trees, and it is visited by thousands of pigeons,
who devour the berries, although their ordinary food of sweet berries
was available in profusion in the mountain forests.)

On some of the Melanesian islands there is a variety of the banana-bird
which frequents the yam and sweet potato plantation, digs into the
hillocks with its power-fill feet, and feeds upon the tubers, as does
the rare toothed-billed pigeon.

One day, when I was residing in the Caroline Islands, a pair of live
birds were brought to me by the natives, who had snared them. They were
in beautiful plumage, and I determined to try and keep them.

The natives quickly made me an enclosure about twenty feet square of
bamboo slats about an inch or two apart, driving them into the ground,
and making a "roof" of the same material, sufficiently high to permit of
three young banana trees being planted therein. Then we quickly covered
the ground with dead banana leaves, small sticks and other _debris_, and
after making it as "natural" as possible, laid down some ripe bananas,
and turned the birds into the enclosure. In ten seconds they had
disappeared under the heap of leaves as silently as a beaver or a
platypus takes to the water.

During the night I listened carefully outside the enclosure, but the
captives made neither sound nor appearance. They were still "foxing," or
as my Samoan servant called it, _le toga-fiti e mate_ (pretending to be
dead).

All the following day there was not the slightest movement of the
leaves, but an hour after sunset, when I was on my verandah, smoking and
chatting with a fellow trader, a native boy came to us, grinning with
pleasure, and told us that the birds were feeding. I had a torch of
dried c