WHERE BIRDS OF PARADISE LIVE 29 
and then, perhaps, they will not be shot any 
more. 
Now, the Birds of Paradise that live on the earth 
to-day do not live all over it, as they used to do in 
those old days when they could hear the lark and 
the nightingale. It is only a very small part of the 
world that they live in now—small, I mean, compared 
to the rest of it—and there are no larks or nightin- 
gales there. I will tell you where it is. Far away 
over the deep sea, farther than Africa, farther than 
India, farther even than Burma or Siam, there are 
a number of great islands and small islands and 
middling-sized islands, which le between Asia and 
Australia, and all of these together are called the 
Malay Archipelago. The largest of all these islands, 
and the one that is farthest away too, is called New 
Guinea, and it is a very large island indeed, the 
largest, in fact, in the world after Australia, which, 
as you know, is so large that we call it a continent. 
Round about this great island of New Guinea, and 
not very far from its shores, there are some other 
islands which are quite tiny in comparison, and it is 
here, just in this one great island and in these few 
small islands near it, that the Birds of Paradise live. 
They do not live in any of the other islands of the 
Malay Archipelago, but only just here in the ones 
that are farthest away of all. 
