86 MATESHIP WITH BIRDS 



It were unwise and that not necessarily for the 

 sake of the bird to pursue our parallel between 

 Bohemian man and Bohemian bird on certain other 

 points. It is true enough that Honey eaters have 

 been found helplessly intoxicated beneath certain 

 flowering trees, but we may safely put those odd 

 cases down to pure inadvertence as distinct from 

 sottishness. Nor would we be unduly gratified by 

 considering which of the two high-living roysterers 

 (man or bird) gives the less thought to the morrow. 

 Suffice it to note that the happiness of the Honey- 

 eater is literally a joy for ever; "the contagion of 

 the world's slow stain" is an unknown quantity in 

 the life of a free, wild bird. 



As a matter of course, life in Australian bush 

 or more settled areas would be a good deal less 

 joyous without the presence of representatives of 

 the Honey-Birds. They are the most characteristic, 

 not to say novel, and largest family of birds found 

 in this continent. All but one of more than 250 

 species known to the world are found in the Aus- 

 tralian region (from Wallace's line to the Sandwich 

 Islands and New Zealand), and something like 90 

 of these belong to Australia itself. A happy 

 arrangement, this! It is as though Mother Nature, 

 having decided upon eucalypts and other myrtaceous 

 trees as the chief feature of Australian vegetation, 

 evolved these birds as kin-spirits of the blossoms, 

 giving them long bills with which to explore the 

 flowers, and sensitive, brush-tipped tongues with 

 which to sweep up the nectar, not to speak of a 

 score of cheery attributes calculated to win the 

 approval of the august lords of creation. And the 



