s entirely yellowish
ashy, somewhat blackish on the breast, and crossed throughout with
narrow blackish wavy bands.

The Seleucides alba is found in the island of Salwatty, and in the
north-western parts of New Guinea, where it frequents flowering trees,
especially sago-palms and pandani, sucking the flowers, round and
beneath which its unusually large and powerful feet enable it to cling.
Its motions are very rapid. It seldom rests more than a few moments on
one tree, after which it flies straight off, and with great swiftness,
to another. It has a loud shrill cry, to be heard a long way, consisting
of "Cah, cah," repeated five or six times in a descending scale, and at
the last note it generally flies away. The males are quite solitary in
their habits, although, perhaps, they assemble at pertain times like the
true Paradise Birds. All the specimens shot and opened by my assistant
Mr. Allen, who obtained this fine bird during his last voyage to New
Guinea, had nothing in their stomachs but a brown sweet liquid,
probably the nectar of the flowers on which they had been feeding. They
certainly, however, eat both fruit and insects, for a specimen which
I saw alive on board a Dutch steamer ate cockroaches and papaya fruit
voraciously. This bird had the curious habit of resting at noon with the
bill pointing vertically upwards. It died on the passage to Batavia, and
I secured the body and formed a skeleton, which shows indisputably that
it is really a Bird of Paradise. The tongue is very long and extensible,
but flat and little fibrous at the end, exactly like the true
Paradiseas.

In the island of Salwatty, the natives search in the forests till they
find the sleeping place of this bird, which they know by seeing its
dung upon the ground. It is generally in a low bushy tree. At night they
climb up the trap, and either shoot the birds with blunt arrows, or even
catch them alive with a cloth. In New Guinea they are caught by placing
snares on the trees frequented by them, in the same way as the Red
Paradise birds are caught in Waigiou, and which has already been
described at page 362.

The great Epimaque, or Long-tailed Paradise Bird (Epimachus magnus), is
another of these wonderful creatures, only known by the imperfect skins
prepared by the natives. In its dark velvety plumage, glowed with bronze
and purple, it resembles the Seleucides alba, but it bears a magnificent
tail more than two feet long, glossed on the upper s