XL] TVILSON'S BIRD OF PARADISE. 255 



the vertex backwards, the bare skin being of the brightest imagin- 

 able cobalt blue.^ The hizarre effect thus produced is still further 

 heightened by two fine lines of feathers, wliich, running length- 

 ways and from side to side, form a dark cross upon the brilliant 

 azure background. I could hardly make up my mind to skin this 

 little ornithological rainbow, whose exquisite plumage it seemed 

 almost a sacrilege to disarrange, but the climate of New Guinea 

 allows of but little delay in this operation, and I set about my task 

 at once. The bird had been scarcely injured by the shot, and I 

 succeeded in making a perfect skin of it. We also added a hen 

 bird of the same species to our collection. Its plumage is of a 

 sober brown, as is the case with the females of all the Paradiseidae, 

 but like the male, the bare head is blue, although not nearly of so 

 bright a colour. 



Wilson's Bird of Paradise, which we had thus been the first 

 Englishmen to obtain — the naturalists Beccari and Bernstein beins 

 the only others who have been fortunate enough to meet wdth it in 

 its native haunts — is entirely confined to Batanta and Waigiou 

 Islands, but though we afterwards shot it on the latter, it would 

 seem to be much rarer there, and during Mr. Wallace's two months' 

 visit he failed to obtain it. We found it frequenting trees of no 

 great height at an altitude of seven or eight hundred feet above the 

 sea, and there is no doubt that, like many of the family to which it 

 belongs, it is very local in its distribution. This localisation is not 

 necessarily permanent, but seems to be dependent rather upon the 

 abundance in certain spots of the fruit in season, for most of the 

 Birds of Paradise are in the main frugivorous, although occasionally 

 varymg their diet with insects. 



We remained four or five days in Marchesa Bay, and were 



fortunate enough to secure ten specimens of the Dipliyllodes. Of 



the Eed Bird of Paradise {Paradisea rubra), which also inhabits 



^ The figure in Gould's ' ' Birds of New Guinea " gives no notion of the extreme 

 brilliancy of the colouring of this part. It begins to fade almost immediately after 

 death, is quite dull in four or five hours, and by next da}' has become entirely 

 black. 



