One of my objects in coming to the Far East was accomplished. I had obtained a specimen of the King Bird of Paradise (Paradisea regia), which had been described by Linnaeus from skins preserved in a mutilated state by the natives. | knew how few Europeans had ever beheld the perfect little organism I now gazed upon. ...
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| Image courtesy https://birdoftheweek.home.blog 2022/03/25/bird-239-king-bird-of-paradise/ |
The remote island in which I found myself situated, in an almost unvisited sea, far from the tracks of merchant fleets and navies ; the wild, luxuriant tropical forest, which stretched far away on every side ; the rude, uncultured savages who gathered round me—all had their influence in determining the emotions with which I gazed upon this "thing of beauty.” I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course—year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intellgent eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild, inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism ; while on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy.
* Alfred R. Wallace. 'The Malay Archipelago' (1869) chap.31.
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