552 The Birds of Paradise. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 



THE BIRDS OP PARADISE. 



As many of my journeys were made with the express ob- 

 ject of obtaining specimens of the birds of paradise, and 

 learning something of their habits and distribution ; and be- 

 ing (as far as I am aware) the only Englishman who has seen 

 these wonderful biixls in their native forests, and obtained 

 specimens of many of them, I propose to give here, in a con- 

 nected form, the result of my observations and inquiries. 



When the earliest European voyagers reached the Moluccas 

 in search of cloves and nutmegs, which were then rare and 

 precious spices, they were presented with the dried skins of 

 birds so strange and beautiful as to excite the admiration even 

 of those wealth-seeking rovers. The Malay traders gave them 

 the name of " Manuk dewata," or God's birds ; and the Por- 

 tuguese, finding that they had no feet or wings, and not be- 

 ing able to learn any thing authentic about them, called them 

 " Passaros de Sol," or Birds of the Sun ; while the learned 

 Dutchmen, who wrote in Latin, called them "Avis paradiseus," 

 or Paradise Bird. John van Linschoten gives these names in 

 1598, and tells us that no one has seen these birds alive, for 

 they live in the air, always turning toward the sun, and never 

 lighting on the earth tiH they die ; for they have neither feet 

 nor wings, as, he adds, may be seen by the birds carried to 

 India, and sometimes to Holland, but being very costly they 

 were then rarely seen in Europe. More than a hundred years 

 later Mr. William Funnel, who accompanied Dampier, and 

 wrote an account of the voyage, saw specimens at Amboyna, 

 and was told that they came to Banda to eat nutmegs, which 

 intoxicated them and made them fall down senseless, when 

 they were killed by ants. Down to 1760, when Linnaeus 

 named the largest species, Paradisea apoda (the footless para- 

 dise bird), no perfect specimen had been seen in Europe, and 

 absolutely nothing was known about them. And even now. 



