Like The Bows Of The Negritos,
It Was Made Out Of The Trunk Of A Very Beautiful Fan-Palm (LIVISTONA
Sp.).
Two pieces of the palm-wood are hollowed out and then stuck
together in a wonderfully clever fashion, so that the joins barely
show.
Vic was fairly good with it when shooting at birds a short
distance away. His ammunition consisted of round clay pellets, which
he fashioned to the right size by help of a hole in a small tin plate,
which he always carried with him.
Birds were fairly plentiful in these mountain forests, and I was glad
to get one of the interesting racquet-tailed parrots of the genus
PRIONITURUS, that are only found in the Philippines and Celebes. It was
curious that up here amongst the pigmy Negritos I should get a pigmy
hawk. It was by far the smallest hawk I had ever seen, being not much
larger than a sparrow. Several species of very beautiful honey-suckers,
full of metallic colours, used to frequent the bright red flowers
of a creeper that generally clambered up the trees overhanging the
streams, and these flowers proved very popular with many butterflies,
especially the giant gold and black ORNITHOPTERAS and various rare
PAPILIOS of great beauty. There was one bird I was most anxious to
get, and though I saw it once I had to leave Luzon without it. It was
a PITTA, a kind of ground thrush. Thrushes of this genus are amongst
the most brilliant of all birds, and in my own collections I possess
a great number of different species that I have collected in other
countries.
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