4 o6 



UTILITARIAN ZOOLOGY 



of the Cklamydera) might be called an avenue, being about 3 

 feet in length, and 7 or 8 inches broad inside; a transverse 

 section giving the figure of a horse-shoe, the round part down- 

 wards. They are used by the birds as a playing-house, or * run ' 

 as it is termed, and are used by the males to attract the females. 

 The 'run' of the Satin- Bird is much smaller, being less than i 

 foot in length, and moreover differs from that just described in 

 being decorated with the highly -coloured feathers of the parrot 

 tribe; the Cklamydera, on the other hand, collects around its 



Fig. 1284. Gardener-Birds (Amblyornis inornatits], with hut and garden; male in foreground, female at back. 



' run ' a quantity of stones, shells, bleached bones, &c. ; they are 

 also strewed down the centre within." 



Newton thus describes (in A Dictionary of Birds] some 

 even more remarkable kinds of Bower- Bird, unknown to science 

 at the time of Gould's observations: "A bird of New Guinea, 

 . . . Amblyomis inornatus, fig. 1284, has been found by Signor 

 Beccari to present not only a modification of bower-building, 

 but an appreciation of beauty perhaps unparalleled in the animal 

 world. His interesting observations . . . show that this species, 

 which he not inaptly calls the ' Gardener ' (G jardiniere), builds 

 at the foot of a small tree a kind of hut or cabin (capanna) some 

 2 feet in height, roofed with orchid-stems that slope to the ground, 

 regularly radiating from the central support, which is covered 



