The Lyre-bird is constantly engaged in traversing the bush from mountain-top to the bottom of the gullies, whose steep and rugged sides present no obstacle to its long legs and powerful muscular thighs. When running quickly through the bush, it carries the tail horizontally, that being the only position in which it could be borne at such times. Besides its loud, full cry, which may be heard at a great distance, it has an inward and varied song, the lower notes of which can only be heard when you have stealthily approached to within a few yards of the bird when it is singing. Its habits appear to be solitary, seldom more than a pair being seen together. It constructs a large nest, formed on the outside of sticks and twigs, like that of a magpie, and lined with the inner bark of trees and fibrous roots. In the neighbouring regions of Papua or New Guinea, and the small isles in their immediate vicinity, extending only a few degrees on each side of the Equator, we find the seat of the wondrous Birds of Paradise, thus named from that peculiar union of splendour and elegance which seems to render them more worthy of the gardens of Eden than of a terrestrial home. The great Bird of Paradise (_P. apoda_) may justly be said to surpass in beauty the whole of the feathered creation. The throat is of the brightest emerald, and the canary-coloured neck blends gradually into the fine chocolate of the other parts of the body. From under the short chestnut-coloured wings project the long delicate and gold-coloured feathers whose beautiful and graceful tufts are equally valued by the princes of the East and the ladies of England. The chocolate-coloured tail is short, but two very long shafts of the same hue considerably exceed in length even the long, loose plumes of the sides. [Illustration: BIRD OF PARADISE.]