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Mr. A. R. Wallace on the great Bird of Paradise, 411 



XL. — On the great Bird of Paradise^ Paradisea apoda, Linn. ; 

 ' Burong mati^ (Dead bird) of the Malaijs ; ' Fanehan' of the 

 Natives of Aru. By Alfred R. Wallace. 



Having enjoyed the rare privilege of a personal acquaintance 

 with this remarkable bird in its native haunts, during my resi- 

 dence in the Aru Islands, I am enabled to give a more complete 

 account of its habits, its local and geographical distribution, and 

 some peculiarities of its structure and ceconomy, than has yet 

 been published, and to correct several errors and misstatements 

 which occur in all the accounts I have seen, I have supplied 

 the deficiencies of my own observations by carefully comparing 

 the accounts of those natives who shoot the birds and prepare 

 the skins for sale, and with whom I have resided for more than 

 tv/o months in the interior of the forests. My own Malay 

 hunters, who have shot most of the fine specimens which I have 

 obtained, have been another independent source of information. 



A person cannot be long in the interior forests of Aru without 

 hearing a loud, harsh, often-repeated cry, wawk-wawk-wawk, 

 wok-wdk-wdk. This is the Paradisea, and it is sure to be heard 

 morning and evening, besides occasionally throughout the day. 

 It is the most frequent and the loudest of all the cries in the 

 forest, and can be heard at the greatest distance. One soon 

 becomes convinced that the bird is most abundant ; and it is, in 

 fact, over a very large part of Aru, one of the very commonest 

 species. Much of the noise, however, is made by the young 

 birds of various ages, and who seem to be ten times as numerous 

 as the full-plumaged, adult males. We shot nearly a dozen of 

 the former before we even saw one of the latter. The adults 

 frequent the very loftiest trees, and are shy and wary, and so 

 strong and tenacious of life, that I know no bird of its size so 

 difficult to kill. It is in a state of constant activity, flying 

 from tree to tree, scarcely resting still a moment on the same 

 branch, and, at the slightest alarm, flying swiftly away among 

 the tree-tops. It is a very early bird, commencing to feed be- 

 fore sunrise ; but it does not seem to gorge itself and then rest 

 half-torpid, like many fruit-eating birds, as it may be seen and 

 heard at all times of the day in a state of activity. 



On examining a freshly killed bird, we see the great muscular 

 strength of the legs and wings, and find the skin to be remark- 

 ably thick and tough, and the skull as well as all the bones very 

 hard and strong. The whole neck is lined with a thick, mus- 

 cular fat, exactly similar to that of the Cephalopterus ornatus, 

 in the same position, and probably serving in both cases to 

 nourish the highly developed plumage of the adjacent parts. 

 This causes the throat externally to appear very wide, and as if 



