HOOP O E.- $9$ 



3Le grand Promerops de la Nouvelle Guinee, Son. Voy, p. 166. pi. joi.-— 7. 



PL enl. 639. GRAND 



Le grand Promeropa a parcmens frifes, Buf. oif. vi. p. 472. _ ***: 



'T'HIS moft extraordinary and beautiful bird is near four feet in Description. 



length, from the tip of the bill to the end of the tail : the 

 body is the fize only of a middling Pigeon, though much elongated 

 in fhape. The bill is three inches long, pretty much curved, and 

 black : the head, hind part of the neck, and upper part of the 

 belly, are of a mining green : the reft of the plumage, on the 

 - upper parts, black, mixed -with a glofs of changeable violet, but 

 the wings, in fome lights, appear blue : the fore part of the neck, 

 and lower part of the belly, without glofs : the fcapular feathers 

 are of a fingular conftruction ; the webs on one fide of the fhaft 

 being exceeding fhort, and on the other of a great length ; the 

 ihape, of them falciform j they are of a purplifh black colour, 

 with the ends for three quarters of an inch of a moft brilliant 

 gilded glofly green, though fome of them., in a different light, re- 

 flecT: a blue glofs : beneath each wing arifes a thick tuft of feathers s 

 eight inches and a half in length, and of a texture refembling the 

 herring-bone ones in the greater Bird, of Paradife ; and, befides 

 thefe, on each fide of the tail are five or fix falciform feathers, 

 with unequal webs, as the fcapulars, though not half fo much 

 curved 5 the colour half dufky half greenilh brown ; the laft di- 

 vided from the other colour, on each feather, in an oblique man- 

 ner : the tail confifts of twelve feathers, and is of an enormous 

 length, the middle ones meafuring no lefs than twenty-eight 

 inches; but each of the others fhortens as it proceeds outwards, 

 £0 the outer one of all, which is only five inches in length ; the 



colour 



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