noofes ; when taken, they will make a vigorous refiftance, and
defend themfelves ftoutly with their hills ; they are inftantly
killed, exenterated, and the breait bone taken out, then dried
with fmoke and fulphur, and exported to Banda, where they are
fold for half a rix-dollar, but on the fpot for a Ipike nail, or a bit
o f old iron. They are exported to all parts o f India and to Perjia,
to adorn the turbans o f people o f rank, and even the trappings
of the horfes, as I have before mentioned; they even reach
Pur key *.
No birds have ever had fo much fable mixed with their
hiftory; it was believed, that they remained always floating oh the
fpicy Indian air, and of courfe not to he in want of legs or feet, o f
which they were fuppofed to be deftitute; that when they wanted
to fleep, they hung themfelves by their two long feathers to the
boughs of a tree ; that they performed the a£t of love during
their flight, and that even ovation, and excluiion o f the young
was difcharged in that element, the male receiving the egg in an
orifice nature had given it for that purpofe ; that they lived on
the dew o f Heaven, and had no evacuation like other mortal
birds. From their being fo much converfant in the higher-
regions, the Portuguefe ftyled them Paffaros da fol, or Sparrows'
o f the Sun ; the iflanders Manu-co-dewata, or the birds o f God,
and 'mod o f the Europeans name them the birds of Paradife.
So happily did the opinion work on the little kings o f the ifles,
that feeing them defcend (as it often happened) dead from the
heavenly regions, they became converts to the truth of. the immortality
o f the foul.
* In the lpcing of 1799, they formed an additional ornamcnt to the elegant head dreis of the
Britiih fair. E.
T h e
T h e next that may be fuppofed to belong to this genus, is K in o .
chiefly brought from Arrou and Sopelo-o. It is called the King o f
the Birds of Paradife, and by the people of Arrou, Wowi Wowi.
Our claffical ornithologifts ftyle it, after Linmeus, Paradifea
regia, Le roi des oifeaux de paradis 1 I do not know what title it
has to King., for it never aflociates with any other fpecies, never
afpires to lofty trees, but flits folitary from bufh to bulh to feed
on berries. It is fuppofed to migrate to Arrou in the dry
monfoon, and to make its neit in New Guinea. *It is taken in
filares o f Gumatty, or with bird-lime prepared from the juice o f
Sukkom, bread fruit, or artocarpus communis.
No tw it h s t a n d in g voyagers give an exaft locality to the
different fpecies o f thefe birds, I cannot readily affent to the opinion,
as the whole extent o f the refidence o f the genus is fo
fmall, that it is improbable but that each o f them muff at times
trefpafs beyond their pretended bounds.
T h e Arrou illands have been under the jurifdiiftion o f Banda
fince the year 1623; they are low, flat, and well peopled with
blacks. It was reckoned that in 1703, there were about two
hundred and forty chriftians. Off one of the ifiands is a
fiihery of fmall pearl, but the chief trade is Sago; and llaves,
which they kidnap in New Guinea, and fell to the Dutch at
Banda.
■ I am fo deficient in materials, that I muft haften to the next
ifles, or thofe of Banda; let me premife, that the intervening
expanfe o f water, has fparingly fcattered over it feveral fmall
ifiands, diftant from each other, one of them called by Dam-
* Sonnerat, 156. tab. 95. Ph.Enl. 496. Edw. tab. iii.
y.QL. íy , x pief9