ottAP. xxxl] the great PARjmSE lilMD. 



445 



choly. It seems sad, that on the one hand such exquisite 

 creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their 

 charms only in these wild inhospitahle regions, doomed 

 for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism ; while on the 

 otlier hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant 

 lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical bght 

 into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure 

 that he will so disturb the nicely -balanced relations of 

 organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearjince, 

 and linally the extinctiou, of these very beings whose 

 wonderful stmcture and beauty he alone is fitted to appre- 

 ciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us 

 that all living things were not made for man. Many of 

 them have no relation to him. The cycle of their exist- 

 ence has gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or 

 broken by every advance in man's intellectual develop- 

 ment ; and their happiness and enjoyments, tlieir loves 

 and hates, theii* struggles for existence, their vigorous hfe 

 and early death, would seem to be imraeiliately related to 

 their own well-being and perjietuation alone, limited only 

 by the equal well-being and perpetuation of the number- 

 less other organisms with which each is moi-e or less inti- 

 mately connected. 



After the first king.bird was obtained, I went %vith my 

 men into the forest, and we were not only rewarded with 

 another in equally perfect plumage, but I was enabled to 

 see a little of the habits of both it and the larger species. 

 It frequents the lower trees of the less dense forests, and is 

 very active, flying strongly with a whirring sound, and 

 continually hopping or flying from branch to branch. It 

 eats hard stone-bearing fruits as large as a gooseberry, and 

 often flutters its wings aft^r the manner of the South 

 American manakins, at which time it elevates and expands 

 the beautiful fans with which its breast is adorned. The 

 natives of Am call it *' Goby-goby." 



One day I got under a tree where a number of the Great 

 Paradise birds were assembled, but they were high up iu 

 the thickest of the foliage, and flying and jumping about 

 so continually that I could get no good view of them. At 

 length 1 shot one, but it was a youiig specimen, and was 

 entirely of a rich chocoiate-brown colour, without either 



