A DICTIONARY OF BIRDS. 
195 
“ Bower-bird, Gould’s rather poetical name for some inhabitants 
of Australia which, while he was in that country, he ascertained,* 
as on his return he announced (25 August, 1840) to the Zoological 
Society, to have the extraordinary habit of building what the 
colonists commonly called ‘ runs.’ ‘ These constructions,’ he 
rightly said (“ Proc. Zool. Soc.,” 1840, p. 94), are perfectly 
anomalous in the architecture of birds, and consist in a collec¬ 
tion of pieces of stick or grass, formed into a bower ; or one 
of them (that of the Chlamydera) might be called an avenue, 
being about three feet in length, and seven or eight inches 
broad inside ; a transverse section giving the figure of a horse-shoe, 
the round part downwards. They are used by the birds as a playing 
house or ‘ run 1 as it is termed, and are used by the males to attract 
the females. The ‘ run ’ of the Satin-bird is much smaller, being 
less than one foot in length, and moreover differs from that just 
described in being decorated with the highly-coloured feathers of 
the Parrot-tribe; the Chlamydera. on the other hand, collects 
around its ‘ run ’ a quantity of stones, shells, bleached bones, etc. ; 
they are also strewed down the centre within.’ 
“ This statement, marvellous as it seemed, has been proved by 
many subsequent observers to be strictly true, and it must be borne 
in mind that these structures,! each of which as above described 
he next year (1 Sept., 1841) figured (‘B. Austral.’ iv. pis. 8, 10), 
have nothing to do with nests of the birds—indeed, their mode of 
nidification, which was not made known until some years later, 
presents no extraordinary feature. Moreover, the birds will build 
their * bowers ’ in confinement, and therein disport themselves, as 
has been repeatedly shown in the Zoological Gardens): by the Satin- 
bird last mentioned, Ptilorhynchus violaceus. Subsequently it was 
found that the Begent-bird, Sericulus vielinus, a species long before 
known, had the habit of making a ‘ bower ’ of similar kind, though 
built, so to speak, in another style of architecture, and having for 
its chief decoration the shells of a small species of Helix. 
*“The discovery seems to have been mainly due to the late Mr. C. 
Coxen, of Brisbane.” 
t “ Gould brought home with him at least two examples, which he gave 
to the British Museum. There is no reason to suppose that this extraordinary 
habit had been described before the date above given, or that the name 
‘Bower-bird’ had been previously used, and yet we find Trelawny in his 
‘ Memoirs of Shelley,’ published in 1878, referring to himself (i. p. 136) as 
saying, in a conversation not later than 1822, ‘ You two have built your nest 
after the fashion of the Australian Bower-birds! ’ ” 
+ “ The ordinary visitor to these gardens seems to regard the structures 
of the Bower-birds without any intelligent interest. He perhaps supposes 
that they are the handiwork of one or other of the keepers. From my own 
long connection with the Zoological Society, I think I am able to state that 
neither in this nor anything else of the kind is any deception practised. The 
Bower-birds are supplied with materials, and that is all.” 
September, 1893. 
