2'70 The Bird 
head. They are twice (or more) the length of the body, 
and, far from being feather-like, they are best described 
as a series of thirty or forty tiny flags of blue enamel, 
each separate, each hanging pendent from the main 
shaft (Fig. 212). It would seem as if Nature herself 
could go no farther in unusual decoration than this. 
se 
Fic. 212.—King of Saxony Bird of Paradise. (From a photograph provided 
by the American Museum of Natural History.) 
In the Double-crested Pigeon of Australia the core 
or fleshy covering of the beak is completely feathered; 
while some of the birds known as plantain-eaters are 
feathered to the very tip of the short beak with plumes 
of delicate green, tipped with white. The extreme of 
feathering is shown by the Cock-of-the-Rock, in which 
