MANUCODE, from the French, an abbreviation of Manucodiata, and the Latinized form of the Malay Manuk-dewata, meaning, says Crawfurd (Malay and Engl. Dictionary, p. 97), the “bird of the gods,” and a name applied for more than two hundred years apparently to Birds-of-paradise in general. In the original sense of its inventor, Montbeillard (Hist. Nat. Oiseaux, iii. p. 163), Manucode was restricted to the King Bird-of-paradise and three allied species; but in English it has curiously been transferred to a small group of species whose relationship to the Paradiseidx has been frequently doubted, and must be considered uncertain. These Manucodes have a glossy steel-blue plumage of much beauty, but are easily distinguished from other birds of similar coloration by the outer and middle toes being united for some distance, and they are very remarkable for the extraordinary convolution of the trachea, in the males at least, with which singular structure is correlated the loud and clear voice of the birds. The convoluted portion of the trachea lies on the breast, between the skin and the muscles, much as is found in the females of the genus Ilhynchaea, in the males of the Curassows (Cracidae), and in a few other birds, but wholly unknown elsewhere among the Passeres. The Manucodes are peculiar to the Papuan Sub-region (including therein the peninsula of Cape York), and comprehend, according to Mr Sharpe (Cat. B. Brit. Museum, iii. p. 164), two genera, for the first of which, distinguished by the elongated tufts on the head, he adopts Lesson’s name Plιonygama, and for the second, having no tufts, but the feathers of the head crisped, that of Manucodia' f and Mr W. A. Forbes (Proc. Zool. Society, 1882, p. 349) observes that the validity of the separation (which has not yet ...