TINIEST BIRDS IN THE WORLD 109 
mean. The ones that live in India we call Hindoos. 
It seems funny, but the reason of it is that when 
Columbus discovered America, he thought it was 
India; for it was India he had been trying to find, 
and he thought he had found it. But it was 
America, not India, and it is only in America that 
the beautiful Humming-birds live—birds that are 
so beautiful as they are want a world to themselves 
to live in. 
Now the birds that we have been talking about— 
‘the Birds of Paradise—are not such very small birds. 
The largest of them is nearly as large as a crow, and 
even the very smallest is not so much smaller than a 
thrush or a starling. But the largest Humming-bird 
is not so large as a sparrow or chafhnch, and the 
smaller ones are the very smallest birds in the 
whole world, some of them being not so very much 
larger than a large humble-bee, which is quite wonder- 
fulto think of. Then they are wonderful fliers. The 
Birds of Paradise fly very well—quite well enough— 
but still there is nothing extraordinary in the way they 
fly. But the little Humming-birds dart about quite 
like lightning, and move their wings so fast that, 
when you look at them, they do not seem to be wings 
at all, but only two little hazy patches in the air, with 
a bright jewel between them, which is the gleaming 
breast of the Humming-bird. All the time their 
