ABSTRACT
No song of birds is to be heard in the Tahitian forest; this innocent music, which in other latitudes fills the groves with life and gaiety, is unknown to Polynesian ears. Under the dense shade, among the creepers and tree-ferns nothing flies, nothing stirs; all is silent,—a strange silence which seems to sit brooding on the melancholy fancy of the natives. But in the rocky defiles, high, fearfully high overhead, the phaeton is to be seen, a small white bird with a long rose-coloured or white feather in its tail.
