also are very numerous. Their note is,
"Wawk-wawk-wawk-Wok-wok-wok," and is so loud and shrill as to be heard a
great distance, and to form the most prominent and characteristic animal
sound in the Aru Islands. The mode of nidification is unknown; but the
natives told me that the nest was formed of leaves placed on an ant's
nest, or on some projecting limb of a very lofty tree, and they believe
that it contains only one young bird. The egg is quite unknown, and the
natives declared they had never seen it; and a very high reward offered
for one by a Dutch official did not meet with success. They moult about
January or February, and in May, when they are in full plumage, the
males assemble early in the morning to exhibit themselves in the
singular manner already described at p. 252. This habit enables the
natives to obtain specimens with comparative ease. As soon as they find
that the birds have fled upon a tree on which to assemble, they build a
little shelter of palm leaves in a convenient place among the branches,
and the hunter ensconces himself in it before daylight, armed with his
bow and a number of arrows terminating in a round knob. A boy waits
at the foot of the tree, and when the birds come at sunrise, and a
sufficient number have assembled, and have begun to dance, the hunter
shoots with his blunt arrow so strongly as to stun the bird, which drops
down, and is secured and killed by the boy without its plumage being
injured by a drop of blood. The rest take no notice, and fall one after
another till some of them take the alarm. (See Frontispiece.)

The native mode of preserving them is to cut off the wings and feet, and
then skin the body up to the beak, taking out the skull. A stout stick
is then run up through the specimen coming out at the mouth. Round this
some leaves are stuffed, and the whole is wrapped up in a palm spathe
and dried in the smoky hut. By this plan the head, which is really
large, is shrunk up almost to nothing, the body is much reduced and
shortened, and the greatest prominence is given to the flowing plumage.
Some of these native skins are very clean, and often have wings and feet
left on; others are dreadfully stained with smoke, and all hive a most
erroneous idea of the proportions of the living bird.

The Paradisea apoda, as far as we have any certain knowledge, is
confined to the mainland of the Aru Islands, never being found in the
smaller islands which surround the central mass. It