on Rare Birds from New Guinea.



333



Of Manucodes, three splendid specimens of Phonygama

p 7 irpureoviolacea arrived, as well as a darker coloured Manucode,

which might possibly be Phonygama hunsteini. These birds

when seen in sunshine, are very fine. They scintillate with

purple and green iridescence.


Five Gardener Bower Birds {Amblyornis subalaris) were

brought, one of which, a male in full plumage with a splendid

crown of golden orange, unfortunately died at Genoa through

battering itself in its terror at the booming of guns around it in

the Port at night. The bird was in the very finest condition, its

skin looking as if it had been freshly killed in a wild state.


One of these five is of a different species, a young male

and larger, presumably Amblyornis inornata. There can be

nothing more intensely interesting and marvellous in nature’s

productions than is the bower and garden of this bird, decorated

as it is with a carpet of moss, upon which are arranged bright

blossoms of orchid and other flowers, berries, beetles, etc. Often

the birds have a taste for two particular colours, such as blue and

orange; the primary ones. Mr. Goodfellow caught his Gardeners

by this means. Finding that at one of the bowers a certain berry

of a bright blue was used as a decoration, he placed in a trap a

blue bead which exactly resembled it, and the bird came to fetch

it : and in another instance he filched from the mossy carpet a

scarlet blossom which lay there, and the bird came down when

all was still to take it back ! It is pathetic to know that it was

captured because it loved to beautify its forest home, and that in

evincing such intelligence and aesthetic feeling, it was not in¬

telligent enough to distinguish the cunning means which ended

in its loss of liberty. Let us hope that these wonderful birds,

as surely will be so, will find a home in some spacious aviary,

where all will be supplied to make them contented, and where

they will not feel they are “by the waters of Babylon”!


I must not pass away from the subject of the Paradise and

Bower Birds without mentioning the skin of a member of the

latter family which Mr. Goodfellow showed me. It is Loria

viaiice (a lady Macgregor’s Bower Bird). A bird of the size of

the Gardener Bower Bird ; the male, a deep velvet black with

steel and violet-blue reflections; the female, greenish olive. A



