feos, WITHOUT WINGS OR FEET 21 
first one and then the other, and you can choose 
the way you like best. The first way is this. 
A long time ago—but long after the little demon 
had crept out of his cave—the early Portuguese 
voyagers (whom your mother will tell you about), 
when they came to the Moluccas to get spices, were 
shown the dried skins of beautiful birds which were 
called by the natives ‘‘ Manuk dewata,”’ which means 
‘““God’s birds.” There were no wings or feet to the 
skins, and the natives told the Portuguese that these 
birds had never had any, but that they lived always in 
the air, never coming down to settle on the earth, and 
keeping themselves all the while turned towards the sun. 
One would have thought they must have wanted 
wings, at any rate, to be always in the air, but that is 
what the natives said. So the Portuguese, who did 
not quite know what to make of it, called them 
**Passaros de Sol,” which means ‘“Sun-birds” or 
‘* Birds-of-the-Sun,” because of their always turning 
towards him. Some time after that, a learned Dutch- 
man who wrote in Latin (just think!), called these 
birds ‘‘ Aves Paradisei’’—Paradise Birds or Birds of 
Paradise—and he told every one that they had never 
been seen alive by anybody, but only after they had 
fallen down dead out of the clouds, when they were 
picked up without wings or feet, and still lying with 
their heads towards the sun in the way they had fallen. 
