34 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



highly advanced aesthetic tastes, and erect their so-called bowers as combined playing 

 halls and veritable museums of arts and natural history wherein they collect together 

 every transportable object that takes their fancy. The location of these bowers is on 

 the ground, usually in the dense scrub or within the sheltering shade of an 

 appropriate bush. The basis of the bower consists of a rough platform of sticks. 

 Upon this is raised on either side a series of vertically disposed twigs, which, 

 meeting at their apices, form a sort of arched corridor that may be two or three 

 feet in length. The furniture and decorations of the building have now to be added. 

 To accomplish this object the whole of the ground inside and around the bower is 

 bestrewn with the variety collection previously referred to. . Shells, bones (often 

 including small skulls), pieces of glass, pottery, and fragments of human wearing apparel, 

 are indiscriminately pressed into service, and mixed in ever varying proportions. 

 Gaudy parrots' feathers, pieces of coloured cloth, or other brightly tinted substances 

 are regarded with especial favour, and when obtained are usually inserted among the 

 interstices of the interlacing branches of the bower's superstructure. The bower, when 

 completed, is regularly resorted to by its architects as a recreation ground, more 

 especially in the early mornings, when, if cautiously approached, they may be seen 

 chasing one another in wanton play, to and fro, through the arched corridor and 

 around the decorated grounds. The same bowev is maintained in a state of repair 

 and frequented by the same pair of birds for several successive seasons, while such 

 continual additions are made to the " museum " collections that they not unfrequently 

 accumulate to the extent of several barrow loads. Among the many known species of 

 Australian Bower Birds, the Satin Bower Bird, Ptilonorhynchus kolosericeus, and the 

 Spotted Bower Bird, Chlamydera maculata are the most familiar. Each of these birds 

 is about the size of an English thrush. In the first-named species the male is a 

 rich satiny-black with a purple gloss, and the female bird a deep olive green. The 

 Spotted Bower Bird, as its name implies, is distinguished by its mottled plumage, which 

 is a mixture of soft greys and browns. These quiet tints are, however, diversified 

 by the presence, on the back of the head, of two small patches of longer, silky 

 feathers of brilliant rose-pink, which are particularly conspicuous in the male bird. 



The Birds of Paradise, Paradisidse, which are usually allocated, in systematic works, 

 to a position adjacent to the Bower Birds, while most abundantly represented in New 

 Guinea, and the adjacent islands of the Malay Archipelago, possess one Australian 

 species that is commonly associated with this group in the popular mind, though 

 strictly belonging to the Hoopoes, Upupidte. This is the so-called Eifle Bird of 



