"The Indians, who place great value on their skins, eagerly seek out their playing grounds, and armed with their blow-tubes and poisoned arrows, lie in wait for the dances. The hunter does not attempt to use his weapon until the company is quite engrossed in the performance, when the birds become so preoccupied with their amusement that four or five are often killed before the survivors detect the danger and decamp." THE RED BIRD OF PARADISE. My home is on an island where it is very warm. I fly among the tall trees and eat fruit and insects. See my beautiful feathers. The ladies like to wear them in their hats. The feathers of my wife are brown, but she has no long tail feathers. My wife thinks my plumes are very beautiful. When we have a party, we go with our wives to a tall tree. We spread our beautiful plumes while our wives sit and watch us. Sometimes a man finds our tree and builds a hut among the lower branches. He hides in the hut and while we are spreading our feathers shoots at us. The arrows are not sharp. They do not draw blood. When they dry the skins they take off the feet and wings. This is why people used to think we had neither feet nor wings. They also thought we lived on the dews of heaven and the honey of flowers. This is why we are called the Birds of Paradise. * * * "Upon its waving feathers poised in air, Feathers, or rather clouds of golden down, With streamers thrown luxuriantly out In all the wantonness of winged wealth." [Illustration: RED BIRD OF PARADISE.] THE RED BIRD OF PARADISE. Birds of Paradise are found only in New Guinea and on the neighboring islands. The species presented here is found only on a few islands. In former days very singular ideas prevailed concerning these birds and the most extravagant tales were told of the life they led in their native lands. The natives of New Guinea, in preparing their skins for exportation, had removed all traces of legs, so that it was popularly supposed they possessed none, and on account of their want of feet and their great beauty, were called the Birds of Paradise, retaining, it was thought, the forms they had borne in the Garden of Eden, living upon dew or ether, through which it was imagined they perpetually floated by the aid of their long cloud-like plumage. Of one in confinement Dr. Bennett says: "I observed the bird, before eating a grasshopper, place the insect upon the perch, keep it firmly fixed by the claws, and, divesting it of the legs, wings, etc., devour it with the head always first. It rarely alights upon the ground, and so proud is the creature of its elegant dress that it never permits a soil to remain upon it, frequently spreading out its wings and feathers, regarding its splendid self in every direction."