Page:Natural History, Birds.djvu/147

. So the Ravens built on, nest upon nest, in perfect security, till the fatal day arrived in which the wood was to be levelled. It was in the month of February, when those birds usually sit. The saw was applied to the butt, the wedges were inserted in the opening, the wood echoed to the heavy blows of the beetle or mallet, the tree nodded to its fall; but still the dam sat on. At last, when it gave way, the bird was flung from her nest; and though parental affection deserved a better fate, was whipped down by the twigs, which brought her dead to the ground."

(Birds of Paradise.)

The Family which we come now to describe, though very limited in extent, contains the most singular and the most magnificent of the feathered tribes. Natives of the remote island of New Guinea, to which they are almost confined, for a long time they were known to Europe only by the mutilated skins which from time to time found their way hither, among the rarities of Indian commerce, and by the strange and extravagant fables with which tradition had embellished their history. Natural history with our forefathers was very largely fabulous, but with no animals had fiction been more busy than with these Birds of Paradise. "From one fabulist to another came the tradition (losing nothing, as is usual with traditions, in its descent), that these 'gay creatures of the element' passed their whole existence in