mall thrushes,
and--with a little stretch of the imagination as to its duration--

"Trilled from out his carmine breast,
His happy breast, the livelong day."

THE BIRD OF MYSTERY.

For me there is a mystery unrevealed;
Sweet Nature, speak to me!

LUCY LARCOM.

XV.

THE BIRD OF MYSTERY.

It is well that Nature has so carefully guarded the lives of her most
beautiful birds, for it is a sad fact that, in the words of an eminent
writer, "the winged order--the loftiest, the tenderest, the most
sympathetic with man--is that which man nowadays pursues most cruelly."
Had they been as accessible as sparrows, even although they equaled them
in numbers, not one would by this time be alive on earth.

The family whose extraordinary dress and mystery of origin justify its
name--Birds of Paradise--is securely hidden in distant islands not
friendly to bird-hunting races. Inaccessible mountains and pathless
forests repel the traveler; impassable ravines bar his advance; sickness
and death lie in wait for the white man, while the native lurks with
poisoned dart behind every bush.

The first of the race that came to us were heralded by myth and invested
with marvels: they had no feet; they slept upon the wing; they fed upon
dew, and hatched their eggs upon their backs. Such were the tales that
accompanied the skins, magnificent beyond anything known to the world in
the glory of plumage, and they were named Birds of Paradise. But science
is supposed in these days to conquer all mysteries, and science armed
itself with powder and shot, game bags, provision trains, and servants,
and set out for the far-away inhospitable islands, the home of this, the
most attractive of all. Science has solved many problems: the "Heart of
Africa" has become a highway; the Polar sea and the source of the Nile
are no longer unknown; but with her most persistent efforts during three
hundred years she has not yet been able to give us the life history of
this one feathered family. Many of her devotees have penetrated to its
home and brought back fresh varieties; money, health, and life have been
freely spent; but, save for a few strange and curious facts, we know
little more of the manner of life of the Birds of Paradise than we did
when we depended on the native legends. How some of them look we know;
we have their skins wired into shape in our museums and gorgeously
pictured in our books; but every traveler finds n