A PAIR OF WONDERFUL WINGS 193 
again as they came down. ‘They do not look flat at 
all. You know, when you try to draw an orange or 
an apple, how difficult it is not to make it look flat 
like a penny. You would make it look flat, I know, but 
these wonderful balls on the Argus Pheasant’s feathers 
look as if they had all been drawn by a very clever 
artist (as indeed they have been—a very clever one), 
who had shaded them properly; you know how 
dificult shading is. There are eighteen or twenty 
— sometimes as many as twenty-two — of these 
wonderful spots on each feather, but I have not 
told you, yet, of what colour they are. Perhaps 
you will think they are very bright and dazzling. 
No, they are not like that at all. They are soft, not 
bright, and their softness is their beauty. All round 
them, at the edge, there is a ring of deep, soft brown, 
and, just inside the ring, there is a lighter brown, and 
it goes on getting lighter and lighter, until, in the 
centre, it 1s a pretty, soft amber, and, at the edge of 
the soft amber, there is a pretty, white, silvery light, 
as if the moon was just coming out from behind 
an amber cloud. So pretty! And when the Argus 
Pheasant spreads his wonderful wings out, you can 
see more than a hundred of these wonderful spots on 
each wing, which is more than two hundred alto- 
gether. Such a sight! so soft and so pretty they 
look. Shall I tell you what such wings are like? 
N 
