The nest of the Nightingale is of a rather uncommon kind, being placed on or near the ground, the outworks consisting of a great number of dead leaves ingeniously put together. It has a deep, cup-like hollow, neatly lined with fibrous roots, but the whole is so loosely constructed that a very slight touch disturbs its beautiful arrangement. There are laid from four to six eggs of a deep olive color. Towards the end of summer the Nightingale disappears from England, and as but little has been observed of its habits in its winter retreats, which are assumed to be in the interior of Africa, little is known concerning them. It must be a wonderful song indeed that could inspire the muse of great poets as has that of the Nightingale. ---- THE BIRDS OF PARADISE. ---- THE far-distant islands of the Malayan Archipelago, situated in the South Pacific Ocean, the country of the bird-winged butterflies, princes of their tribe, the "Orang Utan," or great man-like ape, and peopled by Papuans and Malays--islands whose shores are bathed perpetually by a warm sea, and whose surfaces are covered with a most luxuriant tropical vegetation--these are the home of a group of birds that rank as the radiant gems of the feathered race. None can excel the nuptial dress of the males, either in the vividness of their changeable and rich plumage or the many strangely modified and developed ornaments of feather which adorn them. The history of these birds is very interesting. Before the year 1598 the Malay traders called them "Manuk dewata," or God's birds, while the Portuguese, finding they had no wings or feet, called them Passaros de sol, or birds of the sun. When the earliest European voyagers reached the Moluccas in search of cloves and nutmegs, which were then rare and precious spices, they were presented with dried skins of Birds so strange and beautiful as to excite the admiration even of these wealth-seeking rovers. John Van Linschoten in 1598 calls them "Avis Paradiseus, or Paradise birds," which name has been applied to them down to the present day. Van Linschoten tells us "that no one has seen these birds alive, for they live in the air, always turning towards the sun, and never alighting on the earth till they die." More than a hundred years later, Funnel, who accompanied Dampier and wrote of the voyage, saw specimens at Amboyna, and was told that they came to Banda to eat nutmegs, which intoxicated them and made them fall down senseless, when they were killed by ants.