Note 2 — Music and Singing, Dancing and Toys and Games

Dealing with this question of imitation as a whole, and taking into consideration the apparently marked similarities between the dancing of the two tribes of natives and the two genera of birds, and the further element, perhaps not so strong, as to the similarities in distribution upon the bodies of their decorations, and bearing in mind the evidence obtained from native sources, which, though obviously only fragmentary and insufficient in character, is so far as it goes distinctly confirmatory, I am impelled to suggest that Father Clauser’s theory is not without foundation, and indeed amounts, subject to the question of the species of bird of paradise, to a very substantial possibility. And it is undoubtedly an interesting one.2