116 BEAUTIFUL BIRDS 
world except the Himalayas—that the Humming- 
birds live, and everywhere there are wonderful trees 
and wonderful flowers. As for the trees, I have told 
you what some of them are like in the forests of the 
Malay Archipelago, and in the great forests of Brazil 
I think they are still larger and more wonderful. 
And as for the flowers that grow in those wonderful 
forests or on the great plains or the slopes and sides 
of those great, high mountains, how could I ever 
give you an idea of what they are like, or howshould ~ 
I know where to begin, when there are so many? 
For there are some that are like great scarlet trumpets 
on the outside of their petals, but when you look inside 
them they are like the open mouths of fierce dragons 
shooting out a lot of fiery-orange tongues, all forked — 
and cloven ever so many times over, each tongue 
looking as if it were the tongues of twenty little 
hissing snakes, all tied together in a bundle and ready 
to dart at you. And there are some that areum 
bunches, and each bunch looks as if a lot of oxen had 
put their heads against each other and begun to grow 
smaller and smaller and smaller till their horns were 
no longer than honeysuckles, and then had disappeared 
altogether, except their horns, which had turned pink 
and stayed there. Bunches of little pink ox-horns 
are what those flowers look like. Then there are 
flowers that look as if they had almost changed into 
