m CLEVER EXPLANATION 101 
lady he dresses as nicely as he can, and sometimes he 
goes into attitudes as well. Now, the hen Birds of 
Paradise—so these clever people say—always choose 
for their husbands the birds that have the finest 
feathers, and the other ones, whose feathers are not 
so fine, have to look about for another wife. Of 
course, after the Birds of Paradise have married, they 
make a nest, and very soon there are eggs in it, and 
then the eggs are chipped and little Birds of Para- 
dise come out of them. Some of these little Birds of 
Paradise will be males and some females, and the 
male ones will grow up with feathers like the cock 
birds, and the females with feathers like the hen— 
just as with us, the boys sometimes grow up like the 
father, and the girls sometimes grow up like the 
mother—only with Birds of Paradise it is always so. 
But now, amongst these young Birds of Paradise, 
though all will be beautiful, some will be more beau- 
tiful than the others, more beautiful even than their 
father, perhaps, and you may be sure that those will 
be the ones who will find it most easy to marry, and 
who will have the greater number of children. Some 
of those children will be more beautiful than ‘heir 
fathers, and then ¢hey will marry and have children 
that are still more beautiful than themselves, and so it 
will always be going on. The young male Birds of 
Paradise will always have feathers like their fathers, 
