John Van Linschoten
Gives These Names In 1598, And Tells Us That No One Has Seen
These Birds Alive, For
They live in the air, always turning
towards the sun, and never lighting on the earth till they die;
for
They have neither feet nor wings, as, he adds, may be seen by
the birds carried to India, and sometimes to Holland, but being
very costly they were then rarely seen in Europe. More than a
hundred years later Mr. William Funnel, who accompanied Dampier,
and wrote an account of the voyage, saw specimens at Amboyna, and
was told that they came to Banda to eat nutmegs, which
intoxicated them and made them fall down senseless, when they
were killed by ants. Down to 1760, when Linnaeus named the
largest species, Paradisea apoda (the footless Paradise Bird), no
perfect specimen had been seen in Europe, and absolutely nothing
was known about them. And even now, a hundred years later, most
books state that they migrate annually to Ternate, Banda, and
Amboyna; whereas the fact is, that they are as completely unknown
in those islands in a wild state as they are in England. Linnaeus
was also acquainted with a small species, which he named
Paradisea regia (the King Bird of Paradise), and since then nine
or ten others have been named, all of which were first described
from skins preserved by the savages of New Guinea, and generally
more or less imperfect. These are now all known in the Malay
Archipelago as "Burong coati," or dead birds, indicating that the
Malay traders never saw them alive.
The Paradiseidae are a group of moderate-sized birds, allied in
their structure and habits to crows, starlings, and to the
Australian honeysuckers; but they are characterised by
extraordinary developments of plumage, which are unequalled in
any other family of birds. In several species large tufts of
delicate bright-coloured feathers spring from each side of the
body beneath the wings, forming trains, or fans, or shields; and
the middle feathers of the tail are often elongated into wires,
twisted into fantastic shapes, or adorned with the most brilliant
metallic tints. In another set of species these accessory plumes
spring from the head, the back, or the shoulders; while the
intensity of colour and of metallic lustre displayed by their
plumage, is not to be equalled by any other birds, except,
perhaps, the humming-birds, and is not surpassed even by these.
They have been usually classified under two distinct families,
Paradiseidae and Epimachidae, the latter characterised by long
and slender beaks, and supposed to be allied to the Hoopoes; but
the two groups are so closely allied in every essential point of
structure and habits, that I shall consider them as forming
subdivisions of one family. I will now give a short description
of each of the known species, and then add some general remarks
on their natural history.
The Great Bird of Paradise (Paradisea apoda of Linnaeus) is the
largest species known, being generally seventeen or eighteen
inches from the beak to the tip of
the tail.
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