My Transports Of Admiration And
Delight Quite Amused My Aru Hosts, Who Saw Nothing More In The
"Burong Raja" Than We Do In The Robin Of The Goldfinch.
Thus one of my objects in coming to the far fast was
accomplished.
I had obtained a specimen of the King Bird of
Paradise (Paradisea regia), which had been described by Linnaeus
from skins preserved in a mutilated state by the natives. I knew
how few Europeans had ever beheld the perfect little organism I
now gazed upon, and how very imperfectly it was still known in
Europe. The emotions excited in the minds of a naturalist, who
has long desired to see the actual thing which he has hitherto
known only by description, drawing, or badly-preserved external
covering - especially when that thing is of surpassing rarity and
beauty, require the poetic faculty fully to express them. The
remote island in which I found myself situated, in an almost
unvisited sea, far from the tracks of merchant fleets and navies;
the wild luxuriant tropical forest, which stretched far away on
every side; the rude uncultured savages who gathered round me, -
all had their influence in determining the emotions with which I
gazed upon this "thing of beauty." I thought of the long ages of
the past, during which the successive generations of this little
creature had run their course - year by year being born, and
living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no
intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance
such a wanton waste of beauty.
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