852 James Buckland. 



existence in one district in a single season to supply the trade 

 with the coveted feathers. It is not long ago that a party of 

 plume-hunters surrounded a patch of scrub in which the birds 

 were known to be breeding, and, setting fire to it, they shot down 

 there avian-marvels as they struggled through one pitiless ring 

 of fire only to meet their death in another. Having killed them, 

 the lyrate tail feathers were cut oft", and the bodies left to rot. 



In recent years the tail of the lyre bird was a conspicuous 

 feature of the London plume sales. To-day, its name no longer 

 appears in the catalogues. The trade in its feathers has ceased 

 from lack of victims. 



I know that students of evolution believe that the building 

 and the decoration of the bowers of the Australian bower-bird 

 are meant to fascinate the female, and have been evolved by her 

 selective action. This view is not in accordance with my own 

 observations. I know something of the bower-bird, and I am 

 certain that these highly artificial structures are used solely for 

 innocent enjoyment, and that they not onlv point conclusively 

 to the possession of aesthetic emotions, but show us how far we 

 are from realizing what is taking place in the minds of, or the 

 height of development reached by, the members of the animal 

 world. This sense of beauty is perceptible throughout the Family 

 (Paradiseidae). From the first indication of it in Lawes Paradise 

 bird — which clears a small patch of ground and scatters it with 

 brigdit-coloured leaves — we are able to trace this love of the 

 beautiful upwards through successive developments, such as the 

 decoration of its nest by the rifle-bird, until it reaches its artistic 

 zenith in the moss-covered arbour and gay parterre of the 

 Gardener Bower-bird of New Guinea. 



It is a profound pity that these ornithological wonders should 

 be handed over to the distroyer, for their extermination must 

 leave a blank in the world that never can be filled up. Yet, with 

 the possible exception of the rifle-bird, the Regent bower-bird is 

 more sought after for its feathers than an}^ bird in Australia. 

 It is rapidly becoming scare, yet fifty skins have been already sold 

 in London this year. 



It is the misfortune of the bird of paradise, from the point 

 of view of its continuance, that the various species are not spread 

 generally over New Guinea, but are confined, severally, to more 

 or less restricted areas, in some cases, to islands ofif the coast. 

 It is also the misfortune of this bird, from the same point of view, 

 that the males do not woo separately, but collect in numbers 

 during the courting season to display their glories to the females. 

 These two circumstances combine to render these birds an easy 

 prey to the plume-hunter. So terrible has been their slaughter 

 in the millinery interest that nearly all species have become rare, 

 while some important species are at tlie point of extermination. 



