of the tail are in the form of slender wires about five inches
long, and which diverge in a beautiful double curve. About half an inch
of the end of this wire is webbed on the outer side only, awe coloured
of a fine metallic green, and being curled spirally inwards form a pair
of elegant glittering buttons, hanging five inches below the body, and
the same distance apart. These two ornaments, the breast fans and the
spiral tipped tail wires, are altogether unique, not occurring on any
other species of the eight thousand different birds that are known to
exist upon the earth; and, combined with the most exquisite beauty of
plumage, render this one of the most perfectly lovely of the many lovely
productions of nature. My transports of admiration and delight quite
amused my Aru hosts, who saw nothing more in the "Burong raja" than we
do in the robin of the goldfinch.

Thus one of my objects in coming to the far fast was accomplished. I
had obtained a specimen of the King Bird of Paradise (Paradisea regia),
which had been described by Linnaeus from skins preserved in a mutilated
state by the natives. I knew how few Europeans had ever beheld the
perfect little organism I now gazed upon, and how very imperfectly
it was still known in Europe. The emotions excited in the minds of a
naturalist, who has long desired to see the actual thing which he has
hitherto known only by description, drawing, or badly-preserved external
covering--especially when that thing is of surpassing rarity and beauty,
require the poetic faculty fully to express them. The remote island in
which I found myself situated, in an almost unvisited sea, far from
the tracks of merchant fleets and navies; the wild luxuriant tropical
forest, which stretched far away on every side; the rude uncultured
savages who gathered round me,--all had their influence in determining
the emotions with which I gazed upon this "thing of beauty." I thought
of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of
this little creature had run their course--year by year being born, and
living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent
eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance such a wanton waste
of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad, that
on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and
exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for
ages yet to come to hopeles