The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

264 THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. Tchap.the proper focus, and put under it a little spiny beetle of thegenus Hispa, and then passed it round for examination. Theexcitement was immense. Some declared it was a yard long ;others were friglitened, and instantly dropped it, and all wereas much astonished, and made as much shouting and gesticulationas children at a pantomime, or at a Christmas exhibition ofthe oxyhydrogen microscope. And all this excitement wasproduced by a little pocket-lens, an inch and a half focus, andtherefore magnifying only four or five times, but which to theirunaccustomed eyes appeared to enlarge a hundredfold.On the last day of my stay here, one of my hunters succeededin finding and shooting the beautiful Nicobar pigeon, of whichI had been so long in search. None of the residents had everseen it, which shows that it is rare and shy. My specimen wasa female in beautiful condition, and the glossy coppery andgreen of its plumage, the snow-white tail and beautiful pendentfeathers of the neck, were greatly admired. I subsequentlyobtained a specimen in New Guinea, and once saw it in theKaioa islands. It is found also in some small islands nearMacassar, in others near Borneo, and in the Nicobar islands,whence it receives its name. It is a ground-feeder, only goingupon trees to roost, and is a very heavy, fleshy bird. This mayaccount for the fact of its being found chiefly on very smallislands, while in the western half of the Archipelago it seemsentirely absent from the larger ones. Being a ground feeder itis subject to the attacks of carnivorous quadrupeds, which arenot found in the very small islands. Its wide distribution overthe whole length of the Archipelago, from extreme west to east,is, however, very extraordinary, since, with the exception of afew of the birds of prey, not a single land bird has so wide arange. Ground-feeding birds ai"e generally deficient in powerof extended flight, and this species is so bulky and heavy thatit appears at first sight quite unable to fly a mile. A closer examinationshows, however, that its wings are remarkably large,perhaps in proportion to its size larger than those of any otherpigeon, and its pectoral muscles are immense. A fact communicatedto me by the son of my friend Mr. Duivenboden of Ternate,would show that, in accordance with these peculiarities ofstructure, it possesses the power of flying long distances. Mr. D.established an oil factory on a small coral island, a hundredmiles north of New Guinea, with no intervening land. Afterthe island had been settled a year, and traversed in every direction,his son paid it a visit ; and just as the schooner was comingto an anchor, a bird was seen flying from seaward which fellinto the water exhausted before it could reach the shore. Aboat was sent to pick it up, and it was found to be a Nicobarpigeon, which must have come from New Guinea, and flown ahundred miles, since no such bird previously inhabited theisland.This is certainly a very curious case of adaptation to an un-