Aru are expert archers, never stirring without
their bows and arrows. They shoot all sorts of birds, as well as pigs
and kangaroos occasionally, and thus have a tolerably good supply of
meat to eat with their vegetables. The result of this better living is
superior healthiness, well-made bodies, and generally clear skins. They
brought me numbers of small birds in exchange for beads or tobacco, but
mauled them terribly, notwithstanding my repeated instructions. When
they got a bird alive they would often tie a string to its leg, and keep
it a day or two, till its plumage was so draggled and dirtied as to be
almost worthless. One of the first things I got from there was a living
specimen of the curious and beautiful racquet-tailed kingfisher. Seeing
how much I admired it, they afterwards brought me several more, which
wore all caught before daybreak, sleeping in cavities of the rocky banks
of the stream. My hunters also shot a few specimens, and almost all
of them had the red bill more or less clogged with mud and earth. This
indicates the habits of the bird, which, though popularly a king-fisher,
never catches fish, but lives on insects and minute shells, which it
picks up in the forest, darting down upon them from its perch on some
low branch. The genus Tanysiptera, to which this bird belongs, is
remarkable for the enormously lengthened tail, which in all other
kingfishers is small and short. Linnaeus named the species known to
him "the goddess kingfisher" (Alcedo dea), from its extreme grace and
beauty, the plumage being brilliant blue and white, with the bill red,
like coral. Several species of these interesting birds are now known,
all confined within the very limited area which comprises the Moluccas,
New Guinea, and the extreme North of Australia. They resemble each other
so closely that several of them can only be distinguished by careful
comparison. One of the rarest, however, which inhabits New Guinea, is
very distinct from the rest, being bright red beneath instead of white.
That which I now obtained was a new one, and has been named Tanysiptera
hydrocharis, but in general form and coloration it is exactly similar to
the larger species found in Amboyna, and figured at page 468 of my first
volume.

New and interesting birds were continually brought in, either by my own
boys or by the natives, and at the end of a week Ali arrived triumphant
one afternoon with a fine specimen of the Great Bird of Paradise.
The or