Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
XXXVIII
The Birds of Paradise
As many of my journeys were made with the express object of obtaining specimens of the
Birds of Paradise, and learning something of their habits and distribution; and being (as far as
I am aware) the only Englishman who has seen these wonderful birds in their native forests,
and obtained specimens of many of them, I propose to give here, in a connected form, the
result of my observations and inquiries.
When the earliest European voyagers reached the Moluccas in search of cloves and nut-
megs, which were then rare and precious spices, they were presented with the dried skins of
birds so strange and beautiful as to excite the admiration even of those wealth-seeking rovers.
The Malay traders gave them the name of 'Manuk dewata,' or God's birds; and the Por-
tuguese, finding that they had no feet or wings, and not being able to learn anything authentic
about them, called them 'Passaros de Sol,' or Birds of the Sun; while the learned Dutchmen,
who wrote in Latin, called them 'Avis paradiseus,' or Paradise Bird. John van Linschoten
gives these names in 1598, and tells us that no one has seen these birds alive, for they live in
the air, always turning towards the sun, and never lighting on the earth till they die; for they
have neither feet nor wings, as, he adds, may be seen by the birds carried to India, and some-
times to Holland, but being very costly they were then rarely seen in Europe. More than a
hundred years later Mr. William Funnell, who accompanied Dampier, and wrote an account
of the voyage, saw specimens at Amboyna, and was told that they came to Banda to eat nut-
megs, which intoxicated them and made them fall down senseless, when they were killed by
ants. Down to 1760, when Linnæus
*
named the largest species, Paradisea apoda (the footless
Paradise Bird), no perfect specimen had been seen in Europe, and absolutely nothing was
known about them. And even now, a hundred years later, most topics state that they migrate
annually to Ternate, Banda, and Amboyna; whereas the fact is, that they are as completely
unknown in those islands in a wild state as they are in England. Linnæus was also acquainted
with a small species, which he named Paradisea regia (the King Bird of Paradise), and since
then nine or ten others have been named, all of which were first described from skins pre-
