The Great Paradise Bird. 449 



fill structure aud 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 rela- 

 tion to him. The cycle of their existence has gone on inde- 

 pendently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every advance 

 in man's intellectual development; and their happiness and 

 enjoyments, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, 

 their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be immedi- 

 ately related to theii* own well-being and perpetuation alone, 

 limited only by the equal well-being aud 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 hop- 

 ping 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. The natives of Aru call it 

 " goby-goby." 



One day I got under a tree where a number of the Great 

 Paradise Birds were assembled, but they were high up in the 

 thickest of the foliage, and flying and jumping about so con- 

 tinually that I could get no good view of them. At length I 

 shot one, but it was a young specimen, and was entirely of a 

 rich chocolate-brown color, without either the metallic green 

 throat or yellow plumes of the full-grown bird. All that I 

 had yet seen resembled this, and the natives told me that it 

 would be about two months before any would be found in 

 full jjlumage. I still hoped, therefore, to get some. Their 

 voice is most extraordinary. At early morn, before the sun 

 has risLU, we hear a loud cry of " Wawk — wawk — wawk, wok 

 — wok — wok," which resounds through the forest, changing 

 its direction continually. This is the Great Bird of Paradise 

 going to seek his breakfast. Others soon follow his example ; 

 lories and parroquets cry shrilly, cockatoos scream, king-huut- 



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