4o6 



UTILITARIAN ZOOLOGY 



of the Chlamydera) might be called an avenue, being about 3 

 feet in length, and 7 or 8 inches broad inside; a transverse 

 section giving the figure of a horse-shoe, the round part down- 

 wards. They are used by the birds as a playing-house, or ' run ' 

 as it is termed, and are used by the males to attract the females. 

 The 'run' of the Satin-Bird is much smaller, beine less than i 

 foot in length, and moreover differs from that just described in 

 being decorated with the highly -coloured feathers of the parrot 

 tribe; the Chlarnvdcra, on the other hand, collects around its 



Fij;. 1284. — (Jardeiicr-iJirds {Aiiibiy^^ruis inoriuitn^], uilh hut and garden; male in foreground, female at back. 



' run ' a quantity ot stones, shells, bleached bones, &c. ; they are 

 also strewed down the centre within." 



Newton thus describes (in A Dictionary of Birds) some 

 even more remarkable kinds of Bower- Bird, unknown to science 

 at the time of Gould's observations: — "A bird of New Guinea, 

 . . . Aiubiyornis inornatiis, fig. 12S4, has been found by Signor 

 Beccari to present not only a modification of bower-building, 

 but an appreciation of beauty perhaps unparalleled in the animal 

 world. His interesting obser\'ations . . . show that this species, 

 which he not inaptly calls the ' Gardener ' [Gjardiniere), builds 

 at the foot of a small tree a kind of hut or cabin {capannd) some 

 2 feet in height, roofed with orchid-stems that slope to the ground, 

 regularly radiating from the central support, which is covered 



