340 CLASS AVES. , 



is always difficult to restore to them their original forms. 

 This is the less surprising, as we are told by Helbigius, that 

 after having removed the entrails, they pass a red-hot iron 

 through the body, which must injure the form. 



Levaillant has remarked on this subject, that as the savages 

 remove all the bones of the cranium from the birds of Para- 

 dise, and dry the skin, run through a reed, these operations 

 considerably contract the head, thus deprived of its support, 

 and draw out the eyelids. From this, the characters of small 

 head, and eyes in the bill, scarcely visible, have been deduced. 

 Again, from the inevitable approximation of the feathers, on 

 a very small extent of the hardened skin, results that ap- 

 pearance of natural velvet which, according to this writer, 

 is very improperly attributed to them. 



The birds of Paradise, which had been imagined to live 

 only on dew, are rapacious, according to Bontius, and pursue 

 small birds. Helbigius tells us that they live on various 

 berries, and Linnaeus that their food is insects, and especially 

 the larger butterflies. But it appears that spices are their 

 favourite aliment, and that they never remove from the coun- 

 tries where they grow. In the nutmeg season, the Emerald- 

 Paradise birds are seen flying in numerous flocks, like the 

 thrushes in vintage time in France. 



Some species frequent bushes and thickets — others prefer 

 woods and lofty trees ; but they never perch on the summit, 

 where the strong winds, ruffling their luxuriant plumage, 

 might overturn them. To the branches of these trees the 

 Indians attach light huts, from which they shoot these birds 

 with blunted arrows. 



As naturalists have generally been so perplexed and dis- 

 cordant concerning the classification of even some of the best 

 known species, it is not surprising that a more than ordinary 

 degree of confusion should have prevailed respecting birds 

 so little known as those of Paradise. Accordingly we find 



