A CURIOUS STRUCTURE. 
393 
wards, and thus the interior is left entirely free for the passage of the 
feathered builder. 
The elegance of this curious structure is much increased by the 
decorations lavished upon its entrance and interior. There the bird 
accumulates all the bright and glittering objects he can anywhere 
collect; such as feathers from the tails of various parrots, mussel- 
she] Is, shells of snails, bits of bone, pebbles, and the like. Some of the 
gorgeously-coloured feathers are stuck in and about the framework ; 
others, with the bones and shells, embellish the entrance. The pro- 
pensity of the bower-bird to seize upon every article which will add to 
the decorations of his ball-room is well known to the natives, who, 
when they have lost anything in the bush, straightway repair to the 
nearest " bower," with the certainty that there they will find it. Mr. 
Gould says that he himself has found, at the entrance to a " bower," a 
pretty tomahawk stone an inch and a half in length, very finely 
wrought, together with shreds of blue cotton, evidently picked up at 
some old camp of the natives. 
In size the "bowers" vary greatly, and those which Mr. Gould 
examined had undergone frequent repair. It was easy to perceive, 
from an examination of the articles collected in them, that they had 
been in existence for several years. Mr. Coxen states that, having 
destroyed a " bower," and concealed himself in a hut which he had 
built close at hand, he enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing the " bower " 
reconstructed — the architects, he says, being female birds. 
It seems certain that these structures are not used as nests. In 
Mr. Gould's opinion they are places of rendezvous, where a considerable 
number of individuals of both sexes meet for the sake of amusement, 
or to select partners. The females invariably incubate in the neigh- 
bourhood of the " bowers," among the thick bushes ; and in the 
"bowers" themselves, which are evidently a favourite resort, and are 
seldom empty. 
Another species — the CJdamydera maculata, or spotted bower-bird, 
which wears a rose-coloured band across the back of the neck — is even 
more remarkable. The bird's habitat is the bush-covered plains. Being 
