Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/767

 cockatoos; the lories, varied with crimson and purple, green, yellow, and black; while there are strange little crested green parrots no larger than our blue tit—the smallest of the parrot tribe, as the great black cockatoos are the largest. Kingfishers, too, are remarkably abundant, and include several of the fine raquet-tailed species, with plumage of silvery blue, and with white or crimson breasts. Many other groups of birds are also adorned with exceptionally gay colors; and a careful comparison with the birds of other countries shows that nowhere in the world is there so large a proportion of the whole number of species adorned with brilliant hues. Among insects the same thing occurs, though not in quite so marked a degree; yet the superior beauty of many groups of beetles over the corresponding groups in Borneo is very distinct; and the same is to some extent the case with the butterflies and moths.

Independently of the beauty and singularity, the great number of species of birds inhabiting New Guinea is very remarkable. Considering that there are no resident collectors in the island, and that our knowledge is wholly derived from travelers who have spent a few weeks or months on the extreme northern or southern coasts only, leaving the great mass of the interior wholly unexplored, the number of land-birds already known (about four hundred species) is surprising. It is very much greater than the numbers inhabiting the whole of the West Indian Islands, or Madagascar, or the large, rich, and comparatively well-explored island of Borneo. Even Australia, so much more extensive and so varied in climate and vegetation, has only four hundred and eighty-five land-birds; and when we consider that the central mass of New Guinea, with its lofty mountain ranges and fine upland valleys, yet remains absolutely unexplored, it is not improbable that the birds of this wonderful island may be eventually found to be as numerous as those of its parent continent. We may therefore safely assert that in no part of the world has the naturalist such a certainty of making new and important discoveries as in the still unexplored regions of central New Guinea.

The peculiar race of mankind inhabiting this great island attracted the attention of the earliest voyagers, and the country was called New Guinea from the resemblance of its inhabitants to the negroes of Africa, removed from them by nearly one third the circumference of the globe. The early writers, however, term the people Papuas or Papuans, a Malay term given to them on account of their woolly hair, so different from the perfectly straight hair of almost all the other Eastern races. The Malay word "papuwah" or "puah-puah" means frizzled like wool; and the Malays still call these people "orang papuwah"—woolly-haired men, and the island itself "tana papuwah"—the land of the woolly haired.

It is a very remarkable fact that woolly-haired people should be