(See Frontispiece.) They Returned To
Their Homes The Same Evening, And I Never Saw Anything More Of
Them, Owing, As I Afterwards Found, To Its Being Too Early To
Obtain Birds In Good Plumage.
The first two or three days of our stay here were very wet, and I
obtained but few insects or birds, but at length, when I was
beginning to despair, my boy Baderoon returned one day with a
specimen which repaid me for months of delay and expectation.
It
was a small bird a little less than a thrush. The greater part of
its plumage was of an intense cinnabar red, with a gloss as of
spun glass. On the head the feathers became short and velvety,
and shaded into rich orange. Beneath, from the breast downwards,
was pure white, with the softness and gloss of silk, and across
the breast a band of deep metallic green separated this colour
from the red of the throat. Above each eye was a round spot of
the same metallic green; the bill was yellow, and the feet and
legs were of a fine cobalt ó111e, strikingly contrasting with all
the other parts of the body. Merely in arrangement of colours and
texture of plumage this little bird was a gem of the first water,
yet there comprised only half its strange beauty. Springing from
each side of the breast, and ordinarily lying concealed under the
wings, were little tufts of greyish feathers about two inches
long, and each terminated by a broad band of intense emerald
green. These plumes can be raised at the will of the bird, and
spread out into a pair of elegant fans when the wings are
elevated. But this is not the only ornament. The two middle
feathers of the tail are in the form of slender wires about five
inches long, and which diverge in a beautiful double curve. About
half an inch of the end of this wire is webbed on the outer side
only, awe coloured of a fine metallic green, and being curled
spirally inwards form a pair of elegant glittering buttons,
hanging five inches below the body, and the same distance apart.
These two ornaments, the breast fans and the spiral tipped tail
wires, are altogether unique, not occurring on any other species
of the eight thousand different birds that are known to exist
upon the earth; and, combined with the most exquisite beauty of
plumage, render this one of the most perfectly lovely of the many
lovely productions of nature. 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. Such ideas excite a feeling of
melancholy. It seems sad, that on the one hand such exquisite
creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms
only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to
come to hopeless barbarism; while on the other hand, should
civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral,
intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these
virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the
nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to
cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these
very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is
fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely
tell us that all living things were _not_ made for man. Many of
them have no relation to him. The cycle of their existence has
gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every
advance in man's intellectual development; and their happiness
and enjoyment, their loves and hates, their struggles for
existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be
immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation
alone, limited only by the equal well-being and perpetuation of
the numberless other organisms with which each is more or less
intimately connected.
After the first king-bird was obtained, I went with my men into
the forest, and we were not only rewarded with another in equally
perfect plumage, but I was enabled to see a little of the habits
of both it and the larger species. It frequents the lower trees
of the less dense forests: and is very active, flying strongly
with a whirring sound, and continually hopping or flying from
branch to branch. It eats hard stone-bearing fruits as large as a
gooseberry, and often flutters its wings after the manner of the
South American manakins, at which time it elevates and expands
the beautiful fans with which its breast is adorned.
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