k band of elongated feathers, so as to
form a sort of occipital crest. The wings, tail, and upper surface, are
deep brown, every feather of the back, rump, scapularies, and
secondaries, having a large round spot of full buff at the tip. Primaries
slightly tipped with white. All the tail-feathers with buffy white
terminations. Under parts grayish white. Flank-feathers zigzagged with
faint transverse light brown lines. Bill and feet dusky brown. At the
corner of the mouth the bare, thick, fleshy, prominent skin, is of a
pinky flesh colour, and the irides are dark brown.

The rosy frill adorns the adults of both sexes: but the young male and
female of the years have it not.

Another species, the great bower-bird,[B] was probably the architect of
the bowers found by Captain Grey during his Australian rambles, and which
interested him greatly in consequence of the doubts entertained by him
whether they were the works of a bird or of a quadruped,--the inclination
of his mind being that their construction was due to the four-footed
animal. They were formed of dead grass and parts of bushes, sunk a slight
depth into two parallel furrows, in sandy soil, and were nicely arched
above; they were always full of broken sea-shells, large heaps of which
also protruded from the extremity of the bower. In one of these bowers,
the most remote from the sea of those discovered by Captain Grey, was a
heap of the stones of some fruit that evidently had been rolled therein.
He never saw any animal in or near these bowers; but the abundant
droppings of a small species of kangaroo close to them, induced him to
suppose them to be the work of some quadruped.

[Footnote B: _Chlamydora nuchalis_.]

Here, then, we have a race of birds whose ingenuity is not merely
directed to the usual; ends of existence, self-preservation, and the
continuation of the species, but to the elegancies and amusements of
life. Their bowers are their ball and assembly rooms; and we are very
much mistaken if they are not, like places of meeting,

For whispering lovers made.

The male satin bower-bird, in the garden at the Regent's Park, is
indefatigable in his assiduity toward the female; and his winning
ways to coax her into the bower conjure up the notion that the soul of
some Damon in the course of his transmigration, has found its way into
his elegant form. He picks up a brilliant feather, flits about with it
before her, and when he has caught her eye adds i