Zoological Names and Theories of the Malays. 449 



they reach the ground. But in the Siamese States it is 

 usually fabled that the eggs actually fall on to the earth, and 

 that there they give origin to a peculiar snake — the Uldr 

 Chmtomdnl — which has a duck's head and the voice of the 

 "child of a duck." The Chintomani snake turns into the 

 rhizome of a fern called Pokoh-paku Chintomani {Chintomani^ 

 " Nail-plant or Fern "), and the rhizome is made int6 *' lucky " 

 walking-sticks. I have seen one of these : it was mottled 

 like a snake's skin. It is said that whoever finds the 

 Chintomani snake will become a great man. 



The following is Ambrose Pary's ^ account of the Manu- 

 codiata, or *' Bird of Paradise " : — " Jerome Cardan states, in 

 his treatise * De Subtilitate,' that a bird called Manucodiata 

 — that is, in the speech of the Hebrews, the ' Bird of God ' — 

 is sometimes seen in the Moluccas, either lying dead on the 

 ground or floating on the water : it is never found alive. . . . 

 (The feathers) which clothe the top of its head are of a 

 golden hue, those on its neck like the feathers of a duck, but 

 the plumes of its wings and tail are like a peacock's : it has 

 no feet. And so, if any weariness or need of sleep over- 

 comes it as it flies, it rolls and tv/ists its feathers round the 

 branch of a tree, and thus suspends its body. ... It 

 lives on air, and on the dew it quaffs, alone. The male has 

 a depression in his back in which the female incubates the 



But for the different theories invented to account for the 

 oviposition of a footless and entirely aerial bird, the two 

 stories bear a natural and an actual resemblance to one 

 another. Malays who have travelled are quite aware that 

 the bird of paradise is the real Burong Chrdnddwdsir ; and 

 the great French surgeon's figure leaves no doubt as to the 

 bird he called Manucodiata — a name which is itself a curious 

 corruption of the Malay Burong Deivata, or " Bird of the 

 Gods." 



The story of the Maiwds — the Mias, wrongly called the 

 orang-utang, of Borneo — may be compared with that of the 

 Bird of Heaven, as both are concerned with exotic animals. 



^ Opera Chirurgica, lib. xxii. p. 762. 



