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CHAPTER THE SEVENTH. 



THE BIRD-OF-PARADISE. 

 BY MR. WALTER GOODFELLOW, F.Z.S., M.B.O.U. 



SINCE returning from Dutch New Guinea in February (1911), 

 my attention has been called to a paper by Mr. A. E. Pratt, 

 published by the feather- trade, defending the slaughter of 

 Paradise Birds for millinery purposes. As Mr. Pratt has made 

 several journeys to New Guinea, I am surprised that he should 

 state that these birds " are in no danger of either extermination 

 or serious reduction," and I can only think either that, being an 

 entomologist and not an ornithologist, he has paid no serious 

 attention to the matter, or else that he has personal reasons for 

 defending the trade. 



My experience has been very different. Since 1903 I have 

 been almost constantly in one part or another of New Guinea, 

 and the adjacent islands, and from the first time I set foot in 

 the country I have been aghast at the wholesale slaughter of 

 these wonderful birds, and, when re-visiting the same localities- 

 later, at their complete extermination or greatly diminished 

 numbers. I could quote districts not " in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of towns and trading stations " where their call is now 

 never heard ; but there seems no reason why they should not 

 live even in the vicinity of man. In British New Guinea I have 

 seen several nests of the raggiana in coffee-bushes close to the 

 house of an English planter. 



In considering the danger of extermination, it is necessary 

 to remember that no family of birds is so local. Some species 

 are confined to comparatively small areas or to a single range of 

 mountains, or even to a single side of the mountains ; others 

 to quite small islands or small groups of islands, as in the case 



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