526 



Marvels of the Universe 



The " Paradise Pies " are large birds the size of a crow, with very long tails, and plumage which 

 has intense black for its basis, but a black which is spangled, banded and shot with metallic tints 

 of blue, golden-green, emerald, purple and copper. The Six-wired Bird of Paradise is, with other 

 members of its genus, remarkable for a vivid patch of pure glistening silver on the forehead, the 

 rest of the plumage being black with tints of bronze, purple, gold, green and blue. But the Queen 

 of Saxony's Bird of Paradise, besides the silver forehead and the tints on the upper parts of the body 



of black, purple, emerald and gold, 

 has fluffy side-plumes of pure 

 white streaked with orange and 

 vermilion. 



Perhaps, however, as regards 

 plumage developments the most 

 extraordinary member of the 

 whole group is the small bird 

 sometimes known as the " King of 

 Saxony's Bird of Paradise, which 

 comes from the Amberno Moun- 

 tains, near Geelvink Bay, on the 

 north-west ^ of New Guinea. This 

 bird in its body is no larger than 

 i^^ ■— ^^ j^^ ^ thrush, and its colours are 

 uyi .4 fl^^^ ^^B^^B|l^V' little more than a combination of 



fi?'V ^^HHl^ ^^KI^KKtW brown-black and chestnut glossed 



with green and purple, while the 

 under sides are ochreous-yellow. 

 But from the back of the head 

 grow out plumes of the most ex- 

 traordinary character to be found 

 in the whole of the bird class. 

 They are — in the adult male — 

 twice as long as the bird's body. 

 These two streamers are divided 

 into enamelled lobes, usually about 

 thirty-seven in number. Each 

 lobe on the outer aspect is a pale 

 glistening blue, exactly as though 

 it had been enamelled. The under 

 side is dull reddish-brown. 

 It would be thought that before the twentieth century had been reached, educated men and 

 women would have combined (after reading the works of Alfred Russel Wallace, F. H. Guillemard, 

 d'Albertis, Bowdler-Sharpe, Salvadori, and others to have preserved as a very precious heritage 

 for the human family the Paradise Birds of New Guinea and the adjacent islands. But not so. 

 The destruction of these birds, chiefly for the purpose of decorating women's hats and the turbans 

 of Eastern monarclis, or for making show-cases in the museums of eccentric Americans, is going 

 on at such a terrible rate by native plumage hunters (financed by Dutch, French, British and 

 German firms), that many species are now on the verge of extinction, if not already extinct, 

 whilst others are being rendered scarcer and scarcer and driven far from the haunts of men into 

 inaccessible mountains, where their beauty can excite neither the envy nor the admiration of their 

 persecutors. 



THE TEETH OF THE IGUANODON. 



Specimens of teeth from the Natural History Museum at South Kensington 

 They show various stages of \vear, and denote that their owners were vegetable 

 feeders, 



