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Updated: May 3, 2025
The insects of these four islands have also a common facies facts which seem to indicate that some more extensive land has recently disappeared from the area they now occupy, and has supplied them with a few of its peculiar productions. Every year they visit the Tenimber, Ke, and Aru Islands, the whole north-west coast of New Guinea from Oetanata to Salwatty, and the island of Waigiou and Mysol.
They are certainly distinct from the Timorese or Papuan races, and must be classed in the western rather than the eastern ethnological division of the Archipelago. The whole of the great island of New Guinea, the Ke and Aru Islands, with Mysol, Salwatty, and Waigiou, are inhabited almost exclusively by the typical Papuans.
In other extensive districts inhabited by the same Papuan races, such as Mysol, Salwatty, Waigiou, and some parts of the adjacent coast, the people have taken the first step in civilization, owing probably to the settlement of traders of mixed breed among them, and for many years no such attacks have taken place.
Only one additional species was found, the Seleucides alba, of which he had already obtained a specimen in Salwatty; but he learnt that the other kinds' of which he showed them drawings, were found two or three days' journey farther in the interior.
The language spoken by them is entirely Papuan, being that which is used on all the coasts of Mysol, Salwatty, the north-west of New Guinea, and the islands in the great Geelvink Bay, a fact which indicates the way in which the coast settlements have been formed.
This beautiful bird inhabits the mainland of New Guinea, and is also found in Salwatty, but is so rare that I was only able to obtain one imperfect native skin, and nothing whatever is known of its habits. I will now give a list of all the Birds of Paradise yet known, with the places they are believed to inhabit. Aru Islands. New Guinea. Mysol, Jobie. Waigiou.
The most beautiful, perhaps, were the golden orioles, which my uncle afterwards told me are often classed with the birds of paradise, and are sometimes placed in the same genus as the regent bird of Australia. These, however, might not have been the true golden oriole, because that bird is very rare, and is an inhabitant of the mainland of New Guinea, though also found on the island of Salwatty.
The tongue is very long and extensible, but flat and little fibrous at the end, exactly like the true Paradiseas. In the island of Salwatty, the natives search in the forests till they find the sleeping place of this bird, which they know by seeing its dung upon the ground. It is generally in a low bushy tree.
The kinds obtained are those that inhabit the coasts of New Guinea and its islands, the remainder seeming to be strictly confined to the central mountain-ranges of the northern peninsula; and our researches at Dorey and Amberbaki, near one end of this peninsula, and at Salwatty and Sorong, near the other, enable me to decide with some certainty on the native country of these rare and lovely birds, good specimens of which have never yet been seen in Europe.
The Seleucides alba is found in the island of Salwatty, and in the north-western parts of New Guinea, where it frequents flowering trees, especially sago-palms and pandani, sucking the flowers, round and beneath which its unusually large and powerful feet enable it to cling. Its motions are very rapid.
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