s would stand a heavy
weight without breaking, and if I had escaped being killed, I should
certainly have been crippled for life. I naturally felt very angry
with my neighbour for not having asked Vic to tell me about this,
as the previous day when out alone I had climbed to the top of this
fence and then jumped down into the creepers below; luckily I had
not then noticed this low part further down.

Many of the Filipinos are very good shots with their blowpipes, and
Vic possessed one. It was about nine feet in length, and possessed a
sight made of a lump of wax at one end. Like the bows of the Negritos,
it was made out of the trunk of a very beautiful fan-palm (_Livistona_
sp.). Two pieces of the palm-wood are hollowed out and then stuck
together in a wonderfully clever fashion, so that the joins barely
show. Vic was fairly good with it when shooting at birds a short
distance away. His ammunition consisted of round clay pellets, which
he fashioned to the right size by help of a hole in a small tin plate,
which he always carried with him.

Birds were fairly plentiful in these mountain forests, and I was
glad to get one of the interesting racquet-tailed parrots of the
genus _Prioniturus,_ that are only found in the Philippines and
Celebes. It was curious that up here amongst the pigmy Negritos I
should get a pigmy hawk. It was by far the smallest hawk I had ever
seen, being not much larger than a sparrow. Several species of very
beautiful honey-suckers, full of metallic colours, used to frequent the
bright red flowers of a creeper that generally clambered up the trees
overhanging the streams, and these flowers proved very popular with
many butterflies, especially the giant gold and black _Ornithopteras_
and various rare _papilios_ of great beauty. There was one bird I was
most anxious to get, and though I saw it once I had to leave Luzon
without it. It was a _pitta,_ a kind of ground thrush. Thrushes of
this genus are amongst the most brilliant of all birds, and in my own
collections I possess a great number of different species that I have
collected in other countries. This one that I was so anxious to get
was locally called "Tinkalu." Amongst both Filipinos and Negritos it
has the reputation of being the cleverest of all birds, and, as Vic
expressed it, "like a man." It hops away into the thickest undergrowth
and hides at the least sound. Certainly no bird has ever given me
such a lot of worry and trouble. Many a wea