r will
crack it; it is somewhat triangular, and the outside is quite smooth.
The manner in which the bird opens these nuts is very curious. Taking
one endways in its bill and keeping it firm by a pressure of the tongue,
it cuts a transverse notch by a lateral sawing motion of the sharp-edged
lower mandible. This done, it takes hold of the nut with its foot, and
biting off a piece of leaf retains it in the deep notch of the upper
mandible, and again seizing the nut, which is prevented from slipping by
the elastic tissue of the leaf, fixes the edge of the lower mandible in
the notch, and by a powerful nip breaks of a piece of the shell, again
taking the nut in its claws, it inserts the very long and sharp point
of the bill and picks out the kernel, which is seized hold of, morsel
by morsel, by the extensible tongue. Thus every detail of form and
structure in the extraordinary bill of this bird seems to have its use,
and we may easily conceive that the black cockatoos have maintained
themselves in competition with their more active and more numerous white
allies, by their power of existing on a kind of food which no other bird
is able to extract from its stony shell. The species is the Microglossum
aterrimum of naturalists.

During the two weeks which I spent in this little settlement, I had good
opportunities of observing the natives at their own home, and living in
their usual manner. There is a great monotony and uniformity in everyday
savage life, and it seemed to me a more miserable existence than when it
had the charm of novelty. To begin with the most important fact in
the existence of uncivilized peoples--their food--the Aru men have no
regular supply, no staff of life, such as bread, rice, mandiocca, maize,
or sago, which are the daily food of a large proportion of mankind.
They have, however, many sorts of vegetables, plantains, yams, sweet
potatoes, and raw sago; and they chew up vast quantities of sugar-cane,
as well as betel-nuts, gambir, and tobacco. Those who live on the coast
have plenty of fish; but when inland, as we are here, they only go to
the sea occasionally, and then bring home cockles and other shell-fish
by the boatload. Now and then they get wild pig or kangaroo, but too
rarely to form anything like a regular part of their diet, which is
essentially vegetable; and what is of more importance, as affecting
their health, green, watery vegetables, imperfectly cooked, and even
these in varying and oft