Chap. XV.] BIRDS OF PARADISE. 



325 



were evidently on the feed in the early morning. At last a 

 hen bird flew up off the ground close to me, with a small 

 lizard in her beak, and pitched on a dead branch to eat it, and 

 I shot her. But what of course I wished, was a male in full 

 plumage. This, however, was not to be obtained. It is remark- 

 able what a very large proportion of young males and females 

 of the great Bird of Paradise there seem to be, to the com- 

 paratively small number of males in full dress. Not one of 

 these latter was shot. I believe I saw one at the top of a high 

 tree, but am not certain. Probably the old males are warier, 

 being often hunted, and keep out of the way. They require 

 four or five years to develop full dress. * 



At the breeding season, when the natives kill most of them, 

 they assemble, and are easily obtained. 



The cry " wauk," is not so far removed from such cries as 

 those of the Rook and others of the Corvidie, to which the 

 Paradise birds are allied. The voices of birds need, however, 

 no more necessarily be a test of the pedigrees of the birds 

 themselves, than need language be a test of true race connec- 

 tion amongst mankind. 



Many birds imitate one another's cries, and the Hon. Daines 

 Barrington,t long ago showed by experiment, that nestlings 

 learn their song from their parents, and even their call note, 

 and if taken away very early from the nest, learn the song of 

 any other bird with which they are associated, and then do not 

 acquire that proper to their own species, even if opportunity 

 be afforded. 



If nestling birds' were brought up apart from other birds, 

 they would no more sing, than would men similarly reared 

 have any idea of talking to one another. 



Under these circumstances the birds would utter only what 

 Barrington terms their chirp, a cry for food, which, peculiar to 

 each species, is uttered by all young birds, but which is entirely 

 lost as the bird reaches maturity. Untaught men would be as 

 speechless as apes, far less able to communicate with one 

 another than deaf mutes who watch the communications of 



* It is improbable that V. apoda loses its breeding plumage as soon as 

 the breeding season is over. P. minor, as has been observed in the case 

 of specimens kept in confinement in the Regent's Park Gardens, certainly 

 loses its plumage only at the moulting season, like other richly ornamented 

 birds. P. apoda moults, according to Wallace, in January or February, 

 and is in full plumage in May. At all c\ents there must have remained 

 birds with plumes in September. n 1 1 



t " Experiments and Observations on the Singing of Bird:s, by the 

 Hon. Daines Barrington. Phil. Trans., Vol. LXIII., 1773- P- 249- A- K. 

 Wallace, "Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, p. 220. 

 London, Macmillan, 1875. 



