X.] THE BIRDS OF PARADISE. 227 



reddish orange, and the rump bright ultramarine, we found mucli 

 rarer. Gilolo produced us two of the rarer Pigmy Doves {Ptilopus 

 monachus and ionogaster), their grass -green phimage varied with 

 shades of lavender, yellow, and magenta, and the magnificent 

 Ground-thrush {Pitta maxima), the giant of its genus. This Ijird 

 is, like all the Pittas, of the brightest plumage, but, as it runs 

 along the ground, these colours are invisible, the whole of the upper 

 surftice being a deep velvety black. Beneath, the abdomen is 

 crimson, and the breast snowy white faintly shot with blue in 

 some lights, while the shoulders are of pale metalHc blue of extra- 

 ordinary brilliancy. 



The true Birds of Paradise are, as my reader is perhaps aware, 

 entirely confined to New Guinea and its islands. A solitary ex- 

 ception exists to prove the rule in Wallace's Standard- wing, which, 

 as far as is yet known, occurs only in the two Moluccan Islands 

 — Gilolo and Batchian.-^ But though we could look for no li^'in^■ 

 Paradiseidie in the forests and plantations of Ternate, we found 

 an abundance of their skins in the cabinets of Mr. Bruijn, a 

 collector who nearly every year sends hunters to the little-known 

 regions of New Guinea. Some of them had only recently returned, 

 and as the expedition had Ijeen a fortunate one, we had the ad- 

 vantage of examining several of the rarer species with which we 

 were destined later to become better acquainted. The skins were 

 beautifully prepared — no easy matter in damp climates such as these, 



^ From the earliest writers up to those of the present day the erroneous state- 

 ment is constantly made that the Birds of Paradise are found in the Malay Islands. 

 Camoens may be allowed a poet's licence when he sings — 



" Olha ca pelos mares do Orieute 

 As iutinitas illias espalhadas ; 

 Ve Tidor, e Ternate . . . 



Aqui ha as aureus aves, que uao decem 

 Nunca a terra, e so mortas apparecem." 



{Cant. X. cxxxii.) 



but Miss Bird, in her "Golden Chersonese," brings them another thousand miles 

 farther west, and tells us of their existence in the Malay Peninsula ! 



