This is, as we all know, a token of high civilisation, and even in the ancient times the hanging gardens of Babylon were reckoned as the greatest wonders of that great city, the then mistress of the world.
No savage ever dreamed of such a thing as a pleasure garden, nor could appreciate it if he saw it. Yet there are birds which far surpass the savage in this respect, and which build recreation grounds for the sole purpose of amusement.
These are the well-known Bower-birds of Australia, which I sincerely hope may not be extirpated by the white man, as has been the case with so many creatures, including the aborigines of Tasmania themselves.
The Bower-birds, which are distantly related to our thrush and blackbird, but are about as large as jackdaws, have a curious habit of building arched bowers quite independent of their nests.
The shape of one of these bowers is shown in the accompanying illustration.
The bird first weaves a sort of platform of flexible sticks, and then fastens into them a number of other sticks, so set that they form a sort of arched gallery. Through this gallery the birds love to run, and they invariably decorate the ends with anything pretty that they can pick up, such as feathers, coloured stones, shells, ornaments, and the like. So well is this proclivity known, that whenever any one who is living in the Bush loses any small piece of property, such as a pencil-case or watch-key, or even a tobacco-pipe, he always goes to the Bower-bird’s pleasure garden, and mostly discovers the lost property.
At the Zoological Gardens these Bower-birds have long lived, and it is a most interesting sight to watch them weaving their platforms, raising the bowers over them, and then keep running in at one end and out at the other, like children at play, and with their burnished plumage gleaming in the sunbeams.
The right-hand figure simply depicts a modern pleasure garden, and needs no description.