No enchanted prince could act the deferential lover with more delicate or graceful attention.  Poor fellow, the pert, intruding sparrows plague him abominably; and really it becomes almost an affair of police that some measures should be adopted for their exclusion.  He is subject to fits, too, and suddenly, without the least apparent warning, falls senseless, like an epileptic patient; but presently recovers, and busies himself about the bower.  When he has induced the female to enter it, he seems greatly pleased; alters the disposition of a feather or a shell, as if hoping that the change may meet her approbation; and looks at her as she sits coyly under the overarching twigs, and then at the little arrangement which he has made, and then at her again, till one could almost fancy that one hears him breathe a sigh.  He is still in his transition dress, and has not yet donned his full Venetian suit of black.

In their natural state, the satin bower-birds associate in autumn in small parties; and Mr. Gould states that they may then often be seen on the ground near the sides of rivers, particularly where the brush feathers the descending bank down to the water’s edge.  The male has a loud liquid call; and both sexes frequently utter a harsh, gutteral note, expressive of surprise and displeasure.

Geffrey Chaucer, in his argument to The Assemblie of Foules, relates that, “All foules are gathered before Nature on St. Valentine’s day, to chose their makes.  A formell egle beyng beloved of three tercels, requireth a yeeres respite to make her choise:  upon this triall, Qui bien aime tard oublie-’He that loveth well is slow to forget.’” The female satin-bower bird in the Regent’s Park seems to have taken a leaf out of the ‘formell egle’s’ book:  for I cannot discover that her humble and most obsequious swain has been rewarded for his attentions though they have been continued through so many weary months; but we shall never be able entirely to solve these mysteries till we become possessed of the rare ring sent to the King of Sarra by the King of Arable, ’by the vertue whereof’ his daughter understood ‘the language of all foules,’ unless we can

    Call up him that left untold
  The story of Cambuscan bold,
  Of Camball and of Algersife,
  And who had Canace to wife,
  That own’d the virtuous ring and glass,
  And of the wondrous horse of brass,
  On which the Tartar king did ride.

Edmund Spenser, with due reverence for

   Dan Chauser (well of English undefiled),

has indeed done his best to supply the defect,[C] and has told us that

  Cambello’s sister was fair Canacee,
  That was the learnedst lady in her days,
  Well seem in every science that mote be,
  And every secret work of nature’s ways,
  In witty riddles, and in wise soothsays,
  In power of herbs and tunes of beasts and birds: 

but we learn from him no more of the ring than ‘Dan Chaucer’ tells us:—­