VII

Now, if our Mimus Carolinensis only knew this, how nicely apologetic it might be made. Suppose this person in the homely dress to be taunted with the old affront -"You are only a cat-bird!" How pat might be the reply,-"Ah, well. But there are our progenitors in that far-away sunny land, who wear soft raiment and live in fine houses, are not they similarly named with us? True, our notes of demonstration may not sound to your ears altogether heavenly; but we have it on the best authority that they are quite common even with some of the birds-of-paradise!"

CHAPTER XXVI.

NATURE'S CURIOS. - CONTINUED.

I

The Birds-of-Paradise. -Avian Exquisites.

E have already seen that the bower-birds, long supposed to affiliate with the starlings, are now set down as a division of the family of the paradise-birds. And as respects the birds, which were always regarded as birds-of-paradise, there are differences dividing them into two sections,- one very notable distinction being in the forms of the bills, some of these birds having long, curved beaks, and others short and cone-shaped. Hence, with the bower-birds, the group or family is thus divided into three sub-families, — the bower-birds, and the long and the short-billed birds-ofparadise, the short-bills being regarded as the typical or representative birds.

It is right just here to say that our knowledge of the bird-of-paradise is entirely due to a few adventurous naturalists. On them must we depend for description and narration, and to Mr. Wallace chiefly as the pioneer. But, first, a few words of an historical character seem needed.

New Guinea, with its archipelago, is the only home of the typical or true-blue birds-of-paradise; though, as if for the sake of proving the rule, there is one exception in the fact, that a solitary species, known as Wallace's standard-wing, occurs only in the two Moluccan Islands, Gilolo and Batchian.

From time out of mind the East Indian grandees have delighted to decorate their persons with the skins of these elegant creatures; and later European fashions afforded a market. At present the trade is almost entirely in the hands of Chinamen; and the largest marts for the traffic in the East are Macassar and Ternate, the skins being brought there from New Guinea.

The birds are caught and the skins prepared by the native Papuans, who remove them without much care, after which they are pressed between strips of bamboo and smoke-dried, the legs having been cut off and the skull taken out. Of course, such treatment ruins them for the purposes of the naturalist, and as this was the condition of the specimens first seen by Europeans, it furnished the occasion for some wild flights of imagination under the guise of science.

II

When the old voyagers, about three hundred years ago, visited the Moluccas in search of spices, such as nutmegs and cloves, and any object that might be turned into commercial profit, these doughty adventurers found more than they sought. For the purposes of gain they were glad to get any thing curious and new. Cupidity put eagerness into the search. The native Malays under

stood the spirit of these White men, and so presented some skins of the since famous Emerald Bird. These

sea-rovers were astonished.

"What do you call these birds?" asked the navigator,

as we may suppose.

"Manuk Dewata," said the Malay; that being his own. tongue for "The Birds of God."

And this seaman of Portugal looked thoughtfully at these wonderful things. "Sure enough, the strange creature has no feet! It is not of the earth, but of the air!" So changing the pagan's speech into his own, he called them Passaros de Sol, "The Birds of the Sun."

an

So

Now in those days it was thought the proper thing to write in Latin the marvelous stories of adventure and discovery. Thus, a learned Dutchman gave one more transmutation, and this feathered marvel marvel was nounced as Avis Paradiseus, the Bird-of-Paradise. wrote John van Linschoten in the year 1598. This astute man gravely informs his readers that no one has ever seen these birds alive; that they live in the air, always keeping their faces toward the sun, and never alighting on the earth until they die,- for they have neither feet nor wings, as may be seen by examining any of the birds taken to India, and sometimes to Holland; but that being costly, they are only seldom seen in Europe.

No bird has ever been the subject of more fable accepted as sober fact. A certain old writer does timidly qualify his narrative. It was Peter Heylyn, who wrote Cosmography, and among the wonders mentioned is "the bird called Monicodiata," a Latin barbarism for

Malay, Manuk Dewata. Of this bird, he adds, "which having no feet is in continued motion; and, it is said, that there is a depression in the back of the male, in which the hen doth lay her eggs and hatch her young ones. I bid no man to believe these relations."

And there was that English buccaneer, Dampier, who for a little while became a restless colonist in our own Virginia. In his Voyage Around the World, he says he had seen specimens at Amboyna, and learned from the natives that these birds came to Banda to eat nutmegs, on which they would get intoxicated, and fall senseless to the ground, when they would soon get killed by the ants.

And even in some books still, without intending to deceive, the statement is found that these birds migrate annually to Ternate, Banda, and Amboyna; whereas, no bird-of-paradise in a wild state has ever been seen in either of these islands.

Up to so recent a date as 1758 no complete or entire specimen had been seen in Europe; for it was then that the bird entered upon its scientific career, with a technical name which must perpetuate the credulity of those times. The learned Linnæus named the Emerald -the largest of the species- Paradisea apoda, "the Footless Paradise Bird."

III

Beginning with the year 1854, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, a naturalist, spent eight years in the Malay Archipelago, making a study of these birds in their own homes. He is the first to whom we are indebted