432 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



strange and beautiful birds have been discovered in the 

 north-western and south-eastern peninsulas of this great 

 island, while a space of about 600 miles long by 300 wide, 

 containing a great snow-topped mountain range, remains 

 wholly unknown, there must be no lack of new and 

 perhaps still more wonderful forms to reward the next 

 generation of explorers and collectors. 



In the latter part of the eighteenth century, eight species 

 of these remarkable birds were known, and by the middle 

 of the nineteenth these had been increased to thirteen. 

 But since the occupation of eastern New Guinea by the 

 British and Germans a rapid increase has taken place. In 

 the last edition of my Malay Archii^lago in 1890 I was 

 able to enumerate 37 species ; and at the present time Mr. 

 Ernst Hartert informs me that 52 species are known, but 

 as he includes two species of Manucodia, which I have 

 omitted from the family, the number of undoubted 

 Paradise birds now known may be safel}^ placed at 50. 



Why such wonderful birds should have been developed 

 here and nowhere else is a mystery we shall perhaps never 

 completely solve ; but it is probably connected with the 

 absence of the higher types of the smaller arboreal mam- 

 malia, many of which are especially destructive to eggs 

 and young birds, together with the protection afforded by 

 luxuriant equatorial forests. The only other country in 

 which similar strange developments of plumage and equally 

 superb colours are found is Equatorial America, where 

 somewhat similar conditions prevail, and where mammalia 

 of a low grade of organization have long predominated. 

 Whatever may be the causes at work, their action has not 

 been restricted to the Paradise birds. Nowhere else in 

 the world are Pigeons and Parrots so numerous and so 

 beautiful as in New Guinea. The great crowned pigeons, 

 the largest of the whole family and rivalling the largest 

 game birds, were first described by Dampier as " a stately 

 land-fowl about the size of the dunghill cock, sky coloured, 

 but with a white blotch and reddish spots about the wings, 

 and a long bunch of feathers on the crown " (figured at 

 the bottom of the plate on p. 424). Many of the fruit- 

 doves are striking^ beautiful, being adorned with vivid 



