BIRDS OF PARADISE. 135 



sailing in the air, where all the functions of life 

 were carried on, even to the production of their 

 eggs and young. The dew and the vapours were 

 said to be their only food, nor were they ever 

 supposed to touch the earth till the moment of 

 their death, never taking rest except by suspend- 

 ing themselves from the branches of trees by the 

 shafts of the two elongated feathers which form a 

 characteristic of this beautiful race. The various 

 names applied to them kept up the delusion that 

 originated in the craft of the inhabitants of the 

 eastern countries where they are found ; for the 

 natives scarcely ever produced a skin in former 

 times from which they had not carefully extir- 

 pated the feet. Nor was it only the extreme 

 elegance and richness of their feathers that caused 

 these birds to be sought as the plume for the tur- 

 bans of oriental chiefs; for he who wore that 

 plume, relying implicitly on the romantic accounts 

 of the life and habits of the bird, and impressed 

 with its sacred names, believed that he bore a 

 charmed life, and that he should be invulnerable 

 even where the fight raged most furiously." * 



The sober accounts of honest travellers, as Pi- 

 gafetta, Bontius, and others, who described the 

 birds from their own observation as having feet, 

 and as feeding on small birds and large insects, 

 were rejected with contempt by closet naturalists, 

 and they themselves were accused, in no measured 

 terms, of falsehood. Even after specimens had 

 been brought to Holland, with their feet attached, 

 and after the enumeration in the published Cata- 

 logue of Tradescant's Museum in England, of 

 " Birds of Paradise, or Manucodiata, whereof 



* Penny Cyclop, iv. 419. 



