the head men of the
coast villages would for the future refuse to purchase them from the
mountaineers, and confine themselves instead to the commoner species,
which are less sought after by amateurs, but are a more profitable
merchandise. The same causes frequently lead the inhabitants of
uncivilized countries to conceal minerals or other natural products with
which they may become acquainted, from the fear of being obliged to pay
increased tribute, or of bringing upon themselves a new and oppressive
labour.

CHAPTER XXXIX. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PAPUAN ISLANDS.

NEW GUINEA, with the islands joined to it by a shallow sea, constitute
the Papuan group, characterised by a very close resemblance in their
peculiar forms of life. Having already, in my chapters on the Aru
Islands and on the Birds of Paradise, given some details of the natural
history of this district, I shall here confine myself to a general
sketch of its animal productions, and of their relations to those of the
rest of the world.

New Guinea is perhaps the largest island on the globe, being a little
larger than Borneo. It is nearly fourteen hundred miles long, and in the
widest part four hundred broad, and seems to be everywhere covered with
luxuriant forests. Almost everything that is yet known of its natural
productions comes from the north-western peninsula, and a few islands
grouped around it. These do not constitute a tenth part of the area of
the whole island, and are so cut off from it, that their fauna may well
he somewhat different; yet they have produced us (with a very partial
exploration) no less than two hundred and fifty species of land birds,
almost all unknown elsewhere, and comprising some of the most curious
and most beautiful of the feathered tribes. It is needless to say how
much interest attaches to the far larger unknown portion of this
great island, the greatest terra incognita that still remains for the
naturalist to explore, and the only region where altogether new and
unimagined forms of life may perhaps be found. There is now, I am
happy to say, some chance that this great country will no longer
remain absolutely unknown to us. The Dutch Government have granted
well-equipped steamer to carry a naturalist (Mr. Rosenberg, already
mentioned in this work) and assistants to New Guinea, where they are
to spend some years in circumnavigating the island, ascending its
large rivers a< far as possible into the interior, and makin