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The graceful shrubs, the bright-coloured flowers, ay, the very grass itself, are of species unknown in Europe; while flaming lories and brilliant parroquets fly whistling, not unmusically, through the gloomy forest, and over head in the higher fields of air, still lit up by the last rays of the sun, countless cockatoos wheel and scream in noisy joy, as we may see the gulls do about an English headland.

Blyth and I were in high spirits, for I felt sure ere long that we should find my father, and I was surprised that Uncle Jack did not appear equally confident. We found the woods as we proceeded full of birds of magnificent plumage, parrots, cockatoos, lories, and others of exquisite form and colour, which Blyth at once declared were birds of paradise.

We were amused with the vast number of different cockatoos, lories, and parrots, which were secured by strings on bamboo perches in front of the numerous reed huts, all chattering and talking together, as if carrying on some important consultation; while beautiful metallic-green or white fruit-pigeons were uttering their pleasing coos in all directions.

For the moment, they were chattering with parrots of all colours, and grave cockatoos, who seemed to meditate upon some philosophical problem, whilst brilliant red lories passed like a piece of bunting carried away by the breeze, papuans, with the finest azure colours, and in all a variety of winged things most charming to behold, but few eatable.

Brush-tongued lories, black cockatoos, and gorgeously coloured pigeons, though somewhat less antique, perhaps, in type, give a special character to the bird-life of the country. And in New Guinea, an isolated bit of the same old continent, the birds of paradise, found nowhere else in the whole world, seem to recall some forgotten Eden of the remote past, some golden age of Saturnian splendour.

Could it have been seen from an elevation, it would have had a fine effect; from below I could only catch sight of masses of gorgeous colour in clusters and festoons overhead, about which flocks of blue and orange lories were fluttering and screaming. A good many people died at Dobbo this season; I believe about twenty. They were buried in a little grove of Casuarinas behind my house.

The process was very simple, for he took the thrush and the lories, inserted a sharp-pointed penknife just through the skin, and then with clever fingers turned the delicate skin back, taking care not to injure the feathers either by the moisture of the bird's flesh or by handling and roughening the plumage, the result being that he skilfully turned the skin inside out after cutting through the legs and wings, cleaning the bones of flesh, and leaving in the skull, after stripping the bird right to the beak.

All day long native boats were coming with fish, cocoa-nuts, parrots and lories, earthen pans, sirip leaf, wooden bowls, and trays, &c. &e., which every one of the fifty inhabitants of our prau seemed to be buying on his own account, till all available and most unavailable space of our vessel was occupied with these miscellaneous articles: for every man on board a prau considers himself at liberty to trade, and to carry with him whatever he can afford to buy.

We could have gone on shooting scarlet lories, nutmeg pigeons, and pittas as long as we liked, but that would have been wanton work, and uncle discovered that the neighbouring islands would, wherever we went, give us fresh supplies and present to us birds and insects such as we had never seen before, so at last we prepared to start, and with some little difficulty made Mr Ebony understand that we wanted a good supply of sago, fruit, and fish for our voyage.

It went on and on until the boughs around us were made into splinters and we were beaten to the ground with the force of those missiles, all the dense forest around us echoing to the shrieks of the lories and parrots, the monkeys and the wildcats." "And now the missionaries," said Ella, after a pause. "And what happened after that?" whispered Phyllis. He shook his head.