BIRDS OF PARADISE. With no family of birds has fiction been more busy than with the 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 sailing in the air, where all the functions of life were carried on, even to the production of their eggs and young. The dew and the vapours were said to be their only food, nor were they ever supposed to touch the earth till the moment of their death, never taking rest except by suspending themselves from the branches of trees by the shafts of the two elongated feathers which form a characteristic of this beautiful race. The appellations of Lufft-Vogel, Paradysa Vogel, Passaros de Sol, Birds of Paradise, and God's Birth (to say nothing of Phcenix, a name which was applied to one of them), kept up the delusion that originated in the craft of the inhabitants of the eastern countries where they are found ; for the natives scarcely ever produced a skin in former times from which they had not carefully extirpated the feet Nor was it only the extreme elegance and rich ness of their feathers that caused these birds to be sought as the plume for the turbans of oriental chiefs; for he who wore that plume, relying implicitly on the romantic accounts of the life and habits of the bird, and impressed with its sacred names, believed that he bore a charmed life, and that be should be invulnerable even where the fight raged most furiously.
In vain did honest Pigafetta, who is supposed to have been the first who introduced these birds to the notice of Europeans, represent them as being furnished with legs ; in vain was the same truth attested by Marcgrave, John de Laet, Clusius, Wormiu.s, and Bontius (the last of whom observes on their crooked claws, and even asserts that they devour little birds, such as greenfinches), and referred to by Hernandez. A fairy tale was not to be so put down. Aldrovandua himself was deceived by the birds brought over in the mutilated state above described, and joined in the cry against poor Pigafetta, charging him with falsehood. Johnston, iu 1657, writes thus oracularly of the Birds
of Paradise :—" It is peculiar to them all to be without feet (although Aristotle asserts that no bird is without feet, and Pigafetta assign to them feet a band breadth in length);" and this he declares after Clusius I had refuted the absurdity, and had stated that they had been brought to Holland (where Johnston's book was printed) with their feet on ; and after the publication of Tradescant's Catalogue, wherein are mentioned among the whole birds' of his museum "Birds of Paradise, or Manu codiata, whereof are divers aorta, some with, some without ]eggs" Aud yet this same Johnston has no mercy on that part of the fable which asserts that they live on dew, are perpetually flying, and that their eggs are hatched in a natural cavity on the back of the male. "Of a verity," says the sage, "they must necessarily require rest, and are with ease suspended to the branches of trees by those threads in their tails." Willughby and Ray treat these nonsensical stories as they deserve, and as was to be expected from their reputation as observers. .
The high value set upon these birds awakened the cupidity and the fraud of the Chinese, who made up from parrots, parakeets, and others, artificial Birds of Paradise, ao clumsily however that it is difficult to suppose that Seba, who figures three of them in the 60th plate of his first volume, could have been taken in by the manifest imposition. But there is nothing in the text to show that his suspicion was even excited ; and this is the more extraordinary, as he figures two of tho real species (plate 38 and plate 63) with sufficient accuracy.
Linnaeus, who has commemorated tho fable of the want of feet in these birds by bestowing upon the species most extensively known the name of apoda,' because, as he observes, " the older naturalists called it footless," says that the food of this species consists of the largest butterflies.