196 PARADISE BIRD. 



fine green, with a gloss of polished steel ; feathers of the head, neck, 

 and body small, and ranged over one another like the scales of a 

 fish, appearing, in different lights, to be blue and green alternate ; 

 the legs black. 



Inhabits New Guinea. 



14.— GORGET PARADISE BIRD— Pl. xlvii. 



Paradisea gularis, Ind. Orn. i. 196. Gm. Lin. i. 401. Skate's Zool. vii. 501. t. 69, 



70. Nat. Misc. pl. 993. 

 L'lncomparable, Sonnin. Ois. Pat-ad. 

 Le Hausse-col dore, Ois. de Paradis p. 22. pl. 8, 9. 

 Stourne, Tem. Man. Ed. ii. Anal. p. lv. 

 Gorget Paradise Bird, Gen. Syn. ii. 478. pl. 20. 



THIS is about the size of a Blackbird, and measures, from the 

 tip of the bill to the insertion of the tail, about six inches, but the 

 tail is more than three times the length of the rest. Bill one inch 

 long, rather stout, moderately bent, and black ; the forehead fur- 

 nished with tufted thick feathers, which occupy also the sides of the 

 head, and beneath the eye ; round the throat they are so full, as to 

 enlarge those parts considerably in bulk, and in texture like black 

 plush, or velvet ; but on the chin, at the root of the under mandible, 

 are a few feathers with webs of the common structure ; on the head 

 behind, the nape, hind part and sides of the neck, to the beginning 

 of the back, the feathers are gilded green, of the usual texture, and 

 sitting closer to the skin, give those parts a flat appearance ; at the 

 angles of the mouth begins aline of the most brilliant gilded copper, 

 which passes beneath the eye, growing wider by degrees, and finishes 

 in a kind of a crescent, or gorget, one third of an inch in width, 

 on the fore part of the neck ; from this to the vent dull green, except 

 the middle of the belly, on which is a transverse bright green band ; 

 the back is black, with a copper and purplish gloss, in different 



