But I am sorry to say that there is hardly anybody who knows anything about all these Birds of Paradise, anything about their habits and how they live and how they dance and the way they arrange their wonderful plumage, so as to make it look as beautiful as possible. Perhaps there are a few people who know just a little--a _very_ little--about some of the more common kinds, but as for all the rest, if any one knows anything about them, it must be those black or yellow people that we call savages, who live in the same countries that they live in. That is because, when a traveller from Europe goes out to those countries he always takes a gun--not glasses (or if he does take a pair of glasses he does not use them, or his eyes either, in the right way), and when he sees one of these rare Birds of Paradise, he shoots it, or else frightens it away, as I told you. Then, when he comes back, he writes his book and tells you how he shot it, or tried to shoot it, and then he says: "Unfortunately, nothing whatever is known of the habits of this species." It is not very wonderful that _he_ knows nothing of them, is it? And yet this traveller, with his gun, almost always calls himself a _naturalist_. Now a _real_ naturalist is a person who loves nature. But is not that a funny way to love her--to shoot her children? Depend upon it, that one of those little bottles that the demon keeps his powders in, is labelled "Natural History" or "Love of Nature." You know that _his_ bottles have generally a false label on them. So, I am afraid I cannot tell you much about what the Birds of Paradise do, or how they show off their beautiful feathers. Indeed, it is very much the same with most other beautiful birds, and for the very same reason that I have been telling you, because people _will_ shoot, instead of looking and watching. Just the little that we know about the Great Bird of Paradise, how he has a special tree that he comes to, to have those dances that the natives call "Sácalelis," and how he flies about with his plumes waving, or sits underneath them as if he were in the spray of a falling fountain, that I have told you; but, besides this, I can only tell you just a very little about a Bird of Paradise that I have not said anything about, because, you know, there are so many of them. The little I can tell you is this. Two gentlemen--one of them a Mr. Chalmers and the other a Mr. Wyatt--were once travelling in the part of New Guinea where this Bird of Paradise lives, and one morning, when they were up early, they saw four of the cock birds and two of the hens, in a tree close by them. This is what one of these gentlemen says about them (if there is any word too long for you, or that you don't understand, you must ask your mother to explain it):--