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Updated: May 14, 2025
I also obtained one or two specimens of the fine racquet-tailed kingfisher of Amboyna, Tanysiptera nais, one of the most singular and beautiful of that beautiful family. They belong to that division of the family termed king-hunters, living chiefly on insects and small land-molluscs, which they dart down upon and pick up from the ground, just as a kingfisher picks a fish out of the water.
Since writing before, I have experimented a little on some land-molluscs, and have found sea-water not quite so deadly as I anticipated. You ask whether I shall discuss Man: I think I shall avoid the whole subject, as so surrounded with prejudices, though I fully admit that it is the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist.
Occasionally, too, very minute land-snails would arrive alive on the island after their long sea-voyage on bits of broken forest-trees a circumstance which I would perhaps hesitate to mention in mere human society were it not that I have been credibly informed your own great naturalist, Darwin, tried the experiment himself with one of the biggest European land-molluscs, the great edible Roman snail, and found that it still lived on in vigorous style after immersion in sea-water for twenty days.
One of the subjects on which I have been experimenting, and which cost me much trouble, is the means of distribution of all organic beings found on oceanic islands; and any facts on this subject would be most gratefully received. Land-molluscs are a great perplexity to me.
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