Bower-Birds. 87 



account of the habits of these birds and their 

 allies, bnt also brought home specimens of their 

 architecture, several of which are now at the 

 Natural History Museum at South Kensington, 

 and, as they are placed together in one case, the 

 difference between them can be appreciated at a 

 glance. All of them are, as we have said, built 

 upon the ground, and are mainly composed of 

 sticks, and are more or less decorated with shells, 

 bones, and pebbles, and, in the case of the Silky 

 Bower-bird, with bright-coloured feathers worked 

 into the structure. Like our own ravens and jack- 

 daws, the bower-birds appear to be fond of picking up 

 unconsidered trifles, as Mr. Gould tells us he found 

 in one bower a neatly- worked stone tomahawk, 

 and the natives are in the habit of searching the 

 birds' bowers, often with success, for objects lost in 

 the bush. At the Zoological Gardens there are at 

 the present time specimens of two species the 

 Silky Bower-bird (Ptilonorhynchus violaceus) and 

 the Spotted Bower-bird (Ghlamydodera maculata) 

 and the former are now amusing themselves by 

 bower-building. There are in the aviary niue 

 or ten of these birds, the whole of them, with two 

 exceptions, being cocks, in different stages of 

 plumage ; and it is worthy of remark that the male 

 and female are utterly unlike, the former when in 

 adult plumage being of a beautiful glossy blue- 

 black, with a brilliant sapphire eye, while the 

 latter is, by comparison, but a dull bird, being 

 greenish-brown, with a spotted, or rather spangled, 



