332 STUFFED COMPARED TO LIVING BIRDS. 



I daresay hard epithets will be heaped upon 

 me, cruel man, hard-hearted savage, miserable 

 destroyer, and similar epithets, when I confess 

 to shooting numbers of these burnished beauties. 

 Some of them are before me at this moment as 

 I write; but what miserable things are these 

 stuffed remains, as compared to the living bird ! 

 The brilliant crests are rigid and immoveable; 

 the throat-feathers, that open and shut with a 

 flash like coloured light, lose in the stillness of 

 death all those charms so beautiful in life; the 

 tail, clumsily spread, or bent similar to the 

 abdomen of a wasp about to sting, no more re- 

 sembles the same organ in the live bird, than a fan 

 of peacock's feathers is like to the expanded tail 

 of that bird when strutting proudly in the sun. 



It is useless pleading excuses ; two long days 

 were occupied in shooting and skinning. The 

 two species obtained on this occasion were the 

 Red-backed Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus), 

 often described as the Nootka Hummingbird, 

 because it was first discovered in Nootka Sound, 

 on the west side of Vancouver Island ; the 

 other, one of the smallest known species, called 

 Calliope. This exquisite little bird is mainly 

 conspicuous for its frill of minute pinnated feathers 

 encircling the throat, of most delicate magenta 



