The New Orleans daily Democrat. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1877-1880, 1878-07-21
BIRDS OF PARADISE,
The wonderful Beauty of These DenIzens
0f the Papuan Forests.


When New Guinea was first "discovered'
the natives were found wearing the glorious
plumage of the bird OF paradise and regti-
lar traffic in the skins had been in existence
for ages. The prices paid for them were very
high, young female slave being considered
fair equivalent for q complete skin OF the
emerald bird OF paradise. But there is
nothing more beautiful In the created world
than this bird when, as 1t Is described by
Lafresnaye, 1t expands fanwise Its marvellous
train, halo of gold and silver In the
centre of which the head glitters like an
emerald, the throat flashing with sparks
of ruby red. Another species. the
superb bird of paradise orange-ehest-
nut and purple, with wonderful rufus OF
soft plumes, pale yellow and golden green,
Is hardly less admirable, while both are
eelipsed by the little liking bird of paradise"
maroon and white, with aureoles OF emerald
green and gold springing from its sides and
descending from the back. No wonder that
the old navigators should have called them
the birds Of the sun, and the savages HtaRuco
deUGtd, or birds Of Cod" When Lesson first
saw one on the wing, he, though sober ma
turalist was so dazzled by the sight that it
did not occur to him to shoot at the brilliant
meteor" and the specimen, therefore, escaped
him; while In the works of Pennant, Wallace
and others, the SURPRISING beauty of this bird
exhaustS the vocabulary OF ecstatic admra-
ton, 1t is. however, emphatlcally creature
q liberty and space In sunlight, for II CON
while, If the prison be small, the floating
plumes are damaged, and in gloomy seasons
even In wild state 1t suffers great dlminution
Of beauty. The naturalist can tell us much
s9 ~ ot sRst Id Is strange THESE So birds tbs
natives of Papua - the breeding place
Of this splendid family call the
king, and they never fly with the wind. The
cascades OF plumes that droop from them, the
strange rufus that stand up from their necks
and backs would, If caught by the breeze,
bring them to the ground or drive them head
long, and so they always make way against
the wind, and on very gusty days never fly
abroad at all. The males are comparatively
rare, and every one goes attended by seraE-
Ito OF sober-plumaged danes, and while the
latter fit about In the open ground, not shun-
ming observation, their lord, conscious OF his
fatal gift OF beauty, attempts to hide his ra-
dance in secluded gladeS, or perches himself
but only at sunrise or sunset-on the top
most boughs of the loftiest trees. OF these
the birds frequent only certain kinds, thus
sulcidally indicating their haunts. The tra-
ders' agents are not slow to avail themselves
OF this popularity, and the beautiful race,
were 1t not for their polygamous habits,
might long ago have been extinct The
weapons used to take them are birdlime or
blunt arrows, and TO make the latter effeCtual
the hunter has to climb the tree in which the
birds are roosting In the dusk, and shoot them
at as close quarters as possible.
Perhaps II Bacon had continued his "Wis-
dom of the Anclents" he might have found
out that when the Latin poets spoke of the
crow, punished with blaCkneSS for it's sins,
having once been 50 beautiful bird that the
artistic Apollo chose 1t for his own pet mes
senger, they we're conCealing q facBof science,
and that the bird of paradise is the original
crow before the fall. At any rate the legend
is widespread, for In the oldest of the Hndoo
books is told the story how the crow, then the
favorite OF the gods, and free Of all the seven
heavens, was guilty of eavesdropping, and
how, In punishment for having betrayed the
divine counsels, he was driven by Indra from
before his throne, condemned to feed on car
rion, and all the bravery of his plumage
scorched to cinder black. But whether the
original crow or not, the bird of paradise is OF
the CROW. family, and shares with them a
characteristic defect. For, with all it's
70 corv1ne beak and to the
strong, coarse legs and feet of
bird Of carrion. The New Guinea natives are
accustomed to cut them off, and So the dense
soft plumage concealing the fact of the ampu-
tatlon, these creatures found their way into
Europe as "the footless BIRDS" Poets caught
at the beautiful fiction, and thus "the bird
that never rests" the "wind-cradled bird"
and other phrases became current in litera-
Berkentleld sings, "hath no feet but nobly
flies" Several illustrious and noble houses,
including that Of Savoy, adopted II as their
crest in which 1t Is always represented as leg
less III mlu air, ana the notices appended re-
peat the. fiction in twenty different ways
Earth is nought to me-" II disdain the
earth, always on high" and so on. This
fable necessitated many others, and Heliogab-
alus, phoenix was supposed to hatch It's eggs
on its back, and, when tired of flying about,
TO anchor itself to q tree by twisting It's long
tail feathers round branch Button really
believed that it had no legs, and LinnRus, In
Difference to the Joke, named the greater en-
eraid bird Of paradise-upodu.