64 BEAUTIFUL BIRDS 
a bite here and another there, out of just the ripest 
and nicest. That is a nice, delicate way of eating figs, 
I think, just to take a little and leave the rest. We 
are so greedy that we always eat the whole fig, but 
then we are not Birds of Paradise. 
But now there is one particular fruit which the Red 
Bird of Paradise likes better than any other, much 
better, even, than a ripe fig. It is a fruit which I do 
not know the name of, in fact I am not quite sure 
that it has a name, except in some language which we 
would neither of us understand. But you know what 
an arum lily is, and in those forests that I told you of 
there is a kind of arum lily which climbs up trees, for 
there are climbing lilies there as well as climbing 
palm-trees. This climbing arum lily has a red fruit, 
and it is this red fruit which the Red Bird of Paradise 
thinks so exceedingly nice. It will go anywhere to 
get that fruit, and the naked black man with frizzly 
hair knows that it will; so he makes a trap for it with 
the very fruit that it is so fond of. 
But besides the fruit, two other things are neces- 
sary for making this trap; one of them is a forked 
stick like the handle of a catapult, and the other is 
some string. The Papuan soon cuts the stick, either 
with a knife that he has bought of a white man, or 
with a sharp piece of stone or flint, and the string he 
makes from some creeper, or by rolling the inner 
