VERY WONDERFUL FEATHERS 173 
the way they are made, oh, you would think them 
wonderful. You know that on each side of the quill of 
most feathers there is what is called the web—which we 
have talked about—and this web is made of a num- 
ber of little, light, delicate sprays, like miniature 
feathers, which we call barbs, and these are kept 
close together by having a lot of little, tiddy-tiny 
hooks (though such soft little things don’t look like 
hooks a bit), which are called barbules, with which 
they catch hold of each other, and won’t let each 
other go. That is why the web of a feather—on 
each side of the quill—is so smooth and even. But, 
now, in these wonderful feathers of the Lyre-bird, 
the little delicate things (the barbs) which make the 
webs are much fewer than in ordinary feathers, and 
they have no little hooks to catch hold of each other 
with, and instead of being all together, they are a 
quarter of an inch apart, and wave about, each by 
itself, looking like very delicate threads floating from 
the long slender quill of the feather. And that, too, 
is how those beautiful plume-feathers of the Birds of 
Paradise are formed, and you have seen something 
like it in the long ones of the peacock’s tail. The 
tail of the Lyre-bird is not so grand, perhaps, as that 
of the peacock, but it is more graceful and delicate, 
and on the whole, I ¢h‘zk (for on such points one can 
never be sure) it is still more wonderful. 
