XV.] THE SUPERB BIRD OF PARADISE. 357 



range we had obtained several species, which at a little distance 

 look a uniform black. Two of these — Lojyhorhina and Pctrotia — are 

 furnished w^ith appendages wliich are, perhaps, as striking as any 

 with which long ages of sexual selection have pro^dded the birds 

 of this group, but until the specimen is taken up in the hand they 

 may pass unnoticed. In the former ^ an immense plume of feathers 

 springs from the occipital region, and reaches to the end of the 

 tail. It is of the deepest velvety black, shot in some lights with 

 oily -green reflections, and with the outermost feathers slightly 

 recurved towards the tip. The top of the head is covered with 

 scale -like feathers of metallic green, and a shield of the same 

 colour and nature, but of a still brighter shade, adorns the breast. 

 The rest of the body is dull black. Any further ornament or 

 colour would be out of place, and one feels that the beautiful 

 creature fully deserves its appellation of the Superb Bird of 

 Paradise. 



Almost more beautiful still is Parotia sexpennis, the Six-shafted 

 Bird of Paradise, which Signor D'Albertis was the first European 

 to observe in its native jungle. The curious plumes which give 

 the bird its specific name lie so close to the neck in the dried skin 

 as to be almost invisible. They consist of three slender filaments 

 springing from each side of the head and terminated by a spatulate 

 expansion. A bar of ^ivid steely green across the vertex, and a 

 peculiar tuft of metallic silver at the base of the beak — a colour 

 which, so far as I know, is unique in the bird- world — completes the 

 head decoration. Like Lophorhina, the rest of the plumage is 

 almost entirely black, except at the upper part of the breast, 

 which is furnished with a collar of green and bronze feathers. The 



^ The impossibility of giving all the features of this curious bird in a single 

 illustration has led to its representation in a position which is quite possibly in- 

 correct. As far as could be gathered from the natives, the enormous crest as it 

 appears displayed during the courtship of the female is spread more widely, in the 

 shape of a fan opened out to its fullest extent, and the pectoral shield being ex- 

 panded in a similar manner, the head of the bird forms the centre of an irregxdar 

 circle of feathers of velvety black and emerald, which completely hides the rest of 

 the bod}' when viewed from in front. 



