of Ceram, and IVaigiou. 289 



to the end. Luckily, however, the plumage of these birds is so 

 firmly set that they are washed and cleaned more easily than any 

 others, and thus a few hours' extra work was all their obstinacy 

 cost me. 



Having these beautiful birds brought to me alive, I, of course, 

 made many attempts to preserve them. With my own hands 

 I constructed a large cage in which they could move about 

 freely, and tried every kind of food I could procure. The proper 

 fruits were, however, scattered widely over the forest on lofty 

 trees, and could not be obtained enough ripened with sufficient 

 regularity. Rice and grasshoppers they soon came to eat pretty 

 eagerly, and I was then in hopes of success ; but on the second 

 or third day they were invariably attacked by a kind of convul- 

 sions, fell off their perch, and soon died. I tried altogether 

 seven or eight individuals, ajiparently in perfect health, and in 

 every case with the same result. Some were full-plumaged, 

 others without lateral plumes ; but I could not obtain any very 

 young birds, with which the attempt might probably have suc- 

 ceeded better. 



The live birds were principally remarkable for their excessive 

 activity and liveliness. They were in constant motion ; and the 

 brilliantly contrasted colours of the head and neck, with the 

 erected crests and swelling throat, formed a most beautiful pic- 

 ture. I never saw the red lateral plumes fully expanded, and 

 can therefore form no judgment as to their beauty. They were 

 generally carried under the wing, rising a little over the back, 

 with the white curved tips drooping over the end of the tail. 

 The long flattened tail-cirrhi hang down in a graceful, spiral 

 curve, which is produced by the general curved form of these 

 feathei's (which lay naturally in a complete circle reaching round 

 to the head of the bird) combined with the semicylindrical 

 sectional figure. These plumes pass through a variety of sin- 

 gular forms before they become fully developed. First they 

 appear as simple cirrhi, like those of P. apoda and P.popuana : 

 these have often a spatulate tip, as in Momotus and Tanysiptera. 

 The rachis then becomes flattened out and slightly curved, 

 and finally black, curved cylindrically, and entirely destitute of 

 barb. In one singular example I possess, a single cirrhus has 



