jewels--the bird's two eyes--which are of a beautiful bright yellow colour to match with the yellow plush of its head. Then this bird has a pale blue beak and pale pink legs, and I am sure if he thinks himself very handsome, you can _hardly_ call him conceited. For he would be handsome only with this that I have told you about; that would be quite enough to make him a beautiful bird without anything else. But _has_ he anything else--any other kind of beauty _besides_ what I have told you about? Listen. The emerald throat and the yellow velvet-plush head and the blue beak and the pink legs are as nothing, nothing whatever, compared to the glorious plumes which this Bird of Paradise has on each side of his body. Oh, you never saw such plumes, and you cannot think how lovely they are. There are two of them--one on each side--and each one is made up of a number of very long, soft, delicate silky feathers, which are of an orange-gold or golden-orange colour, and so bright and glossy that they shine in the sun like floss-silk. Just where they spring from the body each one of them has a stripe of deep crimson-red, and, towards the top, they soften into a pretty pale, mauvy brown. Even one feather like that on each side would be beautiful--or one all by itself in the middle--but fancy a _plume_ of them on each side, a thick plume too, though each feather is so slender and delicate--there are so many of them. They look lovely enough when they stream out behind as the bird flies, for they are twice as long as its whole body, so, of course, the two plumes come together and make one lovely large one that lies as softly on the air as the feather of a swan does on the water. The body, then, is almost covered up in all these soft feathers, so that it is just like looking at a flying plume with wings and a head to it.