The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

xs;xi.] ARU ISLANDS.—RESIDENCE IX THE INTERIOR. 339expectation. It was a small bird, a little less than a thrush.The greater part of its i^lumage was of an intense cinnabar red,with a gloss as of spun glass. On the head the feathers becameshort and velvety, and shaded into rich orange. Beneath, fromthe breast downwards, was jDure white, with the softness andgloss of silk, and across the breast a band of deep metallicgreen separated this colour from the red of the throat. Aboveeach eye was a round sjDOt of the same metallic green ;the billwas yellow, and the feet and legs were of a fine cobalt blue,strikingly contrasting with all the other parts of the body.Merely in arrangement of colours and texture of plumage thislittle bird was a gem of the first water ;yet these comprisedonly half its strange beauty. Springing from each side of thebreast, and ordinarily lying concealed under the wings, werelittle tufts of greyish feathers about two inches long, and eachterminated by a broad band of intense emerald green. Theseplumes can be raised at the will of the bird, and sj^read out intoa pair of elegant fans when the wings are elevated. But thisis not the only ornament.The two middle feathers of the tailare in the form of slender wires about five inches long, andwhich diverge in a beautiful double curve. About half an inchof the end of this wire is webbed on the outer side only, andcoloured of a fine metallic green, and being curled spii-ally inwardsform a pair of elegant glittering buttons, hanging fiveinches below the bodj", and the same distance apart. These twoornaments, the breast fans and the spiral tipped tail wires, arealtogether unique, not occurring on any other sijecies of theeight thousand different birds that are known to exist upon theearth ; and, combined with the most exquisite beauty of plumage,render this one of the most perfectly lovely of the manylovely ijroductions of nature. My transports of admirationand delight quite amused my Ai'u hosts, who saw nothing morein the "Burong raja " than we do in the robiir or the goldfinch.^Thus one of my objects in coming to the far East was accomplished.I had obtained a specimen of the King Bird of Paradise(Paradisea regia), which had been described by Linna?usfrom skins preserved in a mutilated state by the natives. Iknew how few EurojDeans had ever beheld the perfect littleorganism I now gazed ujDon, and how very imperfectly it wasstill known in Europe. The emotions excited in tlie mind of anaturalist, who has long desired to see the actual thing whichhe has liitherto known only by description, drawing, or badlypreservedexternal covering—especially when that thing is ofsurpassing rarity and beauty—require the poetic faculty fully toexpress them. The remote island in which I found myselfsituated, in an almost unvisited sea, far from the tracks ofmerchant fleets and navies ; the wild, luxuriant tropical forest,which stretched far away on every side ; the rude, uncultured1 See the upper figure on Plate at commencement of Chapter XXXVIII.Z 2