West-Indian Humming-birds. 499 



whole breast, from beak to feet, suddenly blazes out into 

 the most gloriously brilliant emerald-green that it is possible 

 to imagine. It fairly startles one by its sudden intensity. 

 This beautiful colour loses much of its brilliancy after death 

 when exposed for long to the light. The specimens in the 

 Gould collection in the British Museum at South Kensington 

 have lost all the golden colour from the green, and are now 

 much bluer in colour than when fresh. Also when the feathers 

 are damp they change their colour for the time. I have 

 noticed this in both A. polylmus and Eulampis holosericeus : 

 the former when put away in a damp atmosphere for re- 

 laxing, and the latter when cleaning blood from the feathers 

 with plaster of Paris and water. In both cases the colour 

 becomes much more golden ; but when dry again the original 

 colour obtains. 



To see the Long-tail in all his glory, follow one that has 

 dashed away from a rose-apple tree to feed among some 

 patches of low-growing lantana ; here he will be below tlie 

 level of your eye, instead of being pretty high up among the 

 rose-apple blossoms. A silent approach and a cautious halt 

 will not alarm him, and you can watch him at your leisure 

 as he rapidly examines one orange-flower head after another, 

 even coming almost within arm^s-length of you, balancing 

 himself with rapidly humming wings, for all the world like 

 a big humming-bird hawk-moth, especially in the perfect 

 command he has over his position, shifting only a fraction of 

 an inch at a time as he probes his coral-red black-tipped 

 beak further into the corolla of the flower ; his bronzy-green 

 back and jet-black head exciting your admiration, until it is 

 eclipsed by the blazing emerald of his breast as he sud- 

 denly faces you at another flower-head, peering into the 

 blossom with sparkling black eyes, all the time surrounded 

 by a filmy grey halo of rapidly vibrating wings, while the 

 two long streamers from his blue-black tail float behind him, 

 gracefully waving at every motion of the bird. Suddenly he 

 is gone — so quickly, indeed, that you hardly know in which 

 direction this little emerald fairy phantom of an atom has 

 sped his hungry way. But your eye reaches other patches of 



