There exists in Australia, the country of zoological singularities, a bird with very curious customs. This is the Satin Bower-bird. The art displayed in this bird's constructions is not less interesting than the sociability he gives evidence of, and his desire to have for his hours of leisure a shelter adorned to his taste. The bowers which he constructs, and which present on a small scale the appearance of the arbours in our old gardens, are places for re-union and for warbling and courtship, in which the birds stay during the day, when no anxiety leads them to disperse. They are not, properly speaking, nests built for the purpose of rearing young; for at the epoch of love each couple separates and constructs a special retreat in the neighbourhood of the bower. These shelters are always situated in the most retired parts of the forest, and are placed on the earth at the foot of trees. Several couples work together to raise the edifice, the males performing the chief part of the work. At first they establish a slightly convex floor, made with interlaced sticks, intended to keep the place sheltered from the moisture of the soil. The arbour rises in the centre of this first platform. Boughs vertically arranged are interlaced at the base with those of the floor. The birds arrange them in two rows facing each other; they then curve together the upper extremities of these sticks, and fix them so as to obtain a vault. All the prominences in the materials employed are turned towards the outside, so that the interior of the room may be smooth and the birds may not catch their plumage in it. This done, the little architects, to embellish their retreat, transport to it a number of conspicuous objects, such as very white stones from a neighbouring stream, shells, the bright feathers of the parroquet, whatever comes to their beak. All these treasures are arranged on the earth, before the two entries to the bower, so as to form on each side a carpet, which is not smooth, but the varied colours of which rejoice the eye. The prettiest treasures are fixed into the wall of the hut. These houses of pleasure, with all their adornments, form a dwelling very much to the taste of this winged folk, and the birds pass there the greater part of the day, preening their feathers and narrating the news of the forest. Bower-birds' clubs are drawing-rooms raised at the common expense by all who frequent them. The Spotted Bower-bird, the _Chlamydera maculata_, which also lives in the interior of Australia, exercises this method of construction with equal success. The bowers built by these birds may be one metre in length; this is on a very luxurious scale, the animal itself only measuring twenty-five centimetres. In this species, as among other Bower-birds, the bowers are not the labour and the property of a single couple; they are the result of the collaboration of several households, who come together to shelter themselves there. These birds feed only on grains, so that