covers the Isle of Timana, creating a region of perpetual dimness from
western beach to eastern precipice, where orchids cling and palms peer on
rocks below. All the vegetation is matted and interwoven, only the
topmost branches of the milkwood escaping from the clinging, aspiring
vines. Tradition asserts that not many years since Timana was much
favoured by nutmeg pigeons, now sparsely represented; but the varied
honey-eater and a friar bird possessing a most mellow and fluty note,
cockatoos and metallic starlings are plentiful. Although there is no
permanent fresh water, the pencil-tailed rat leaves numerous tracks on
the sand, and scrub fowls keep the whole surface perpetually raked.

From a mound adjacent to the beach a black boy brought fifteen eggs as we
picnicked on the beach, and though some of them were nigh upon hatching,
not one was covered with white ants--which, an authority asserts,
particularly like crawling over the eggshells, so as to be ready when
wanted by the chicks. Nor have I ever seen an instance of this alleged
exhibition of self-sacrifice on the part of the white ant. Another boy
had eaten his very substantial lunch, but the eggs were tempting and he
baked two. One, and that new-laid, is ample for an ordinary mortal. The
condition of the first resembled that which the embarrassed curate
described as "good in parts"; but "Mickie" was not nice over a
half-hatched egg. Indeed, was it not rather more piquant than otherwise?
The second proved to contain a fully developed chicken. Now the chick
emerges from the shell feathered, and this, but for the unfortunate
accident of discovery, would have begun to scratch for its living in a
day or so. Mickie flicked away the fragments of shell from the steaming
dainty and laid it snugly on a leaf. "That's for Paddy"--an Irish
terrier, always of the party. It was an affecting act of renunciation.
Presently "Paddy" came along; but "Paddy," who, too, had lunched,
bestowed merely a sniff and a "No, thank you" wag of the tail. "What, you