CU. XXXVlll.] 



DIFFICULT TO OBTAIN. 



573 



Ocean, mid h rii^j;ed and harbourless. The country is all 

 rocky aud mountiunoua, covered everyu'hei*e \y'\\\\ dense 

 forests, olTering in its swamps and precipices and seirated 

 ridges an almost impassable barrier to the unkuowTi 

 interior; and the people are dangerous savages, in the 

 very lowest stage of barbarism. In suclv a country, and 

 among auch a people, are found these wonderful produc- 

 tions of Nature, the Birds of Paradise, whose exquisite 

 beauty of form and colour and strange developments of 

 plumage are calculated to excite the wonder and admira- 

 tion of the most civilized and the most intellectual of 

 mankind, and to furnish inexhaustible materials for 

 study to the naturalist, and for speculation to the philo- 

 sopher. 



Thus ended niy search after these beautiful birds. Five 

 voyages to difieront parts of the district they inhabit, each 

 occui<ying in its preparation and execution the larger {>art 

 of ft year, produced me only five species out of the fourteen 

 known to exist in the New Guinea district. The kinds 

 obtained are those that inliabit the coasts of New Guinea 

 and its islands, the remainder seeming to be strictly con- 

 fined to the central mountain-ranges of the northern 

 peninsula; and our researchers at liorey and Amberbaki, 

 near one end of this peninsula, and at Salwatty and 

 Sorong, near the other, enable rae to decide with some 

 certainty on the native country of these rare and lovely 

 birds, good apecimeiifi of whicli have never yet be^n seen 

 in Europe. 



It must be considered as somewhat extraordinary that, 

 during five years* residence and travel in Celebes, the 

 Moluccas, and New Guinea, I should never have been 

 able to piu-chase skins of lialf the species which Lesson, 

 forty years ago, obtained during a few weeks in tlie 

 same countries. I believe that all, except the common 

 species of commerce, are now much more difficult to obtain 

 than they were even twenty years ago ; and 1 impute it 

 principally to their ha\ing been sought aft*!r by the Butch 

 officials through the Sult^m of Tidore. Tiie chiefs of the 

 annual expeditions to collect tribute have had oixlers to got 

 all the rare sorts of Paradise Birils ; aiid aa they pay little 

 or nothing for them (it being sutlicient to say they are for 



