United States or Slovenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The New Guinea people, as D'Albertis found, worship the dried mummies of their fathers and husbands. A little higher in the scale we get the developed mummy-worship of Egypt and Peru, which survives even after the evolution of greater gods, from powerful kings or chieftains. Wherever the actual bodies of the dead are preserved, there also worship and offerings are paid to them.
One of the most attractive of the recent additions to the list was made by Signor D'Albertis, and named for him Drepanoris Albertisi. In a letter to a Sydney newspaper he tells the story of the discovery, which occurred while he was living in a Papuan mansion built upon the trunks of trees, and reached by means of a long ladder.
The Manucodia are the curly Birds of Paradise, and our knowledge of one of the latest and most novel of them is owing not to the indefatigable naturalists who have braved the dangers and discomfort of their wild island home, neither to the English Wallace, the Dutch Von Rosenburg, the Italian Beccari, nor to D'Albertis, nor Bruiju, nor De Myer, whose names will be forever associated with the splendid family, but to a British officer of scientific tastes.
Bigg-Wither, in South Brazil, and D'Albertis, in New Guinea, noticed these firefly gatherings; I also once had the rare good fortune to witness a phenomenon of the kind on a very grand scale.
The Italian traveller Beccari, in 1876, speaks of them as "Karonis," and states that they occupy a chain of mountains parallel to the north coast of the north-west peninsular of the island. D'Albertis, Lawes, and other travellers have seen and described individuals of the pygmy race of the mountains of New Guinea.
Word Of The Day