^ 



38 BIRD-OF-PARADISE 



but it is now certain that he was anticipated by Maximilianus 

 Transylvanus, a young man who was residing in the Spanish court 

 on the arrival of the survivors of Magellan's comi^any, and 

 promptly wrote to ^, his fath er^ the Archbishop of Salzburg, an 

 account of their discoveries and spoils, sending moreover to him 

 one of the wonderful birds they had obtained. This account {De 

 Moluccis insuUs &c.)^ was published at Cologne in the January 

 following, and the native name of the birds, of which it seems that 

 five examples were brought home, is given as Mamuco-Diata, a 

 variant of Manucodiata, meaning the Bird of the Gods, a name 

 which seems to be still in use (c/. Crawfurd, Malay and Engl. Did. 

 p. 97). But it may well be that even before this Birds-of-Paradise 

 were known to Europeans, for the Portuguese reached the Moluccas 

 in 1510, to say nothing of the possibility of skins being imported 

 by Eastern traders at a much earlier period. Belon, who travelled 

 in the Levant between 1546 and 1549, mentions (Observations 

 de plusieurs singularitez &c. liv. iii. chap. 25), among the feathery 

 adornments of the Janissaries, plumes which could hardly be other 

 than those of these birds ; and expressly states that they were 

 obtained from the Arabs.^ His statement was first published in 

 1553, and in the same year appeared the work of Cardanus, De 

 Subtilitate, wherein (lib. x.) the Manucodiata, as the Bird-of-Paradise 

 now began to be called (the adoption of its Malay name shewing 

 that knowledge of it was derived from Spanish or Portuguese navi- 

 gators), is made to support the avithor's argument. In 1555 it was 

 again treated of by Belon, as well as by Gesner, who figured (p. 612) 

 what seems to have been a specimen of Paradisea minor, both 

 of them expressing doubt as to the truth of the stories which were 

 already rife on the subject. Some of these were touched upon in 

 1557 by J. C Scaliger in his reply (Exotericarum exercitationum Liber 

 XV. ccxxviii. 2) to Cardanus, while in 1599 Aldrovandus (Ornithol. 



(which were doubt-less cut otf) but in their place long feathers of different colours 

 like great plumes (joennacchi), the tail like a Thrush's, and all the rest of the 

 feathers, the wings excepted, of a dull colour. Much of this description fits the 

 only species of Bird-of-Paradise that inhabits Batchian, the ruler of which 

 island, as above stated, gave the birds ; but that species remained unknown to 

 naturalists until Mr. Wallace procured examples in October 1858 {Malay Archi- 

 pelago, ii. pp. 40, 41), and it was subsequently described as Seonioptera 

 wallacii. 



^ I have not seen the original, but a fac-simile reprint, together with a trans- 

 lation of it, is given by the late Mr. Henry Stevens of Vermont in his Johann 

 Schoner &c., edited by Mr. C. H. Coote (London : 1888). 



^ He said that they belonged to birds called Bhintaces, which some 

 modern writers identified with the Apus of classical authors, though he himself 

 thought they were tlie feathers of the Phccnix. A plausible case might indeed 

 be made out for connecting the legend of the bird last-named with that of the 

 gods and of paradise. 



