136 BEAUTIFUL BIRDS 
out against, and your mother will explain to you 
what a background is. Then, on the back this 
Humming-bird is green too—in fact you might call 
him the emerald Humming-bird—but it is darker 
than that other green (if anything so bright cau be 
darker) and without the lovely turquoise-blue in it. 
It is a glory, but not such a glory as the one on his 
breast ; not the glory of heaven that fell upon him at 
its gates—perhaps it is his memory of it as he flew 
away. 
But now I feel sure you will ask why the same 
brightness which streamed out of heaven, and spoilt 
the plumage of the Birds of Paradise, should have 
made the plumage of this Humming-bird so beautiful. 
Well, it is a difficult question, but perhaps it is because 
the Humming-bird was thinking of heaven, and wish- 
ing to get into it, whilst the Birds of Paradise had got 
tired of being in heaven and were only thinking of 
earth. That might have made a very great difference. 
And perhaps you will say, “If the Humming-birds 
are sunbeams that have been changed into birds, 
why should some of them have been made more 
beautiful afterwards in other ways?” Well, as to 
that, there are a great many different kinds of Hum- 
ming-birds (more than four hundred, as I told you), 
so perhaps they were not quite all of them sunbeams 
first, and besides, even when a bird has been a 
