The Bird World Described with Pen and Pencil, by W. H. D. Adams and H. Giacomelli

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1878 edition. Excerpt: ...first record of them in the pages of European writers occurs in Pigafetta's narrative of Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe. The old voyager relates that the king of Barbian, an island to the south-west of Gilolo, gave to the Spaniards a slave and nearly two hundred pounds of cloves as a present for the Emperor Charles V.; also "two most beautiful dead birds, about the size of a thrush, with small heads, long bills, legs a palm in length and as slender as a writing-quill. Instead of proper wings, they have long feathers of different colours, like great ornamented plumes. The tail resembles that of a thrush. All the feathers, FANTASTIC FABLES. 248 except those of the wings, are of a dark colour. These birds never fly but when the wind blows. We were informed," adds Pigafetta, " that they came from the earthly paradise, and were called Bolondinata; that is, 'birds of God.'" The Western mariners translated this term into ave de paraiso, whence comes our "birds of paradise." And, indeed, in the first garden, watered by the four immortal rivers, where the parents of the human race wandered in their days of innocence, fairer creatures could not have been seen than these bright and slowing birds. The specimens imported into Europe before the era of maritime discovery and enterprise began were always imperfect, --the legs having been removed in the process of embalming them. Hence arose some fantastic fables. It was asserted that they were aerial sylphs; that they lived wholly in the air; that they performed all the functions of life while on the wing; that they never rested except for a few moments, when they suspended themselves by their long tails to the branches of the trees. They were beings of a superior...