72 Wonders of the Bird World 



Another remarkable form is the Red Bird of Paradise 

 (Uranornis rubra), in which the shafts of the two centre tail- 

 feathers, instead of being merely narrow and wire-like as in 

 the true Birds of Paradise (Paradisea), are flattened out so 

 that they are exactly like a piece of whalebone. This 

 curious development begins, however, as an ordinary 

 feather, and even when the whalebone stage is reached, 

 there is often to be found a tip of absolute feathery plume. 

 In the true Birds of Paradise, such as Paradisea apoda or 

 P. minor, the shafts of the central tail-feathers are produced 

 into a kind of wire. In the young males, as Dr. Meyer 

 has recently shown, the middle tail-feathers are at first no 

 longer than the rest of the other rectrices, but are some- 

 what pointed at the end, and in the first moult they seldom 

 seem to grow far beyond the line of the other feathers, 

 though the vanes of the outer or inner web are sometimes 

 wanting, predicting that in a future stage they will be 

 absent altogether. At the second moult the feathers still 

 maintain a good deal of lateral web, and often widen out 

 into a narrow racket at the ends, and in successive moults 

 they appear to be always emitted from the sheath as wire- 

 like shafts. It is not known whether the bird nibbles any 

 of the web off with its bill, but it is probable that, as in the 

 case of the Racket-tailed Parrots {Prioniturus}, the centre 

 tail-feathers have a hereditary tendency to become wire- 

 like, and from the figures given by Dr. Meyer, there would 

 seem to be great irregularity in the amount of webbing to 

 the shafts of these curiously-developed feathers. 



One of the most remarkable of the Birds of Paradise, 

 and certainly one of the most wonderful birds in the whole 

 world, is the King of Saxony's Bird of Paradise (Pteri- 

 dophora alberti}. This extraordinary species was described 

 by Dr. A. B. Meyer, the Director of the Dresden Museum, 

 in 1894, and when he sent me a picture of the bird along 

 with his original description, I could not help exclaiming 



