ioo WILD BIRDS 



have exquisite colour and pattern, but it is in the 

 cut of the wings that ornament is most notable. 

 Even in a cork box they are lovely things ; what 

 must they be when flying in the forests and swamps 

 of the Tropics ! The butterfly of paradise has never 

 been described, thousands of these fine patterned 

 painted butterflies have never been described 

 for you cannot describe from the dead and dry 

 insects. 



Have, indeed, the birds of paradise and those 

 winged gems the humming birds ever been truly 

 described ? I turn to Gould's work on them a 

 noble and sincere work of its kindbut can find 

 only fragments about the life history of many of 

 these birds. We have not more than the Latin 

 names of hundreds of them and the name is the 

 least thing about the humming bird or a butterfly 

 of paradise. 



It is the same with the humming bird as with 

 many bird-winged butterflies the colour adorn- 

 ment is chiefly secured not by pigment, but by the 

 shot dyes. The effect is more splendid than any 

 effect of pigment. In England the number of butter- 

 flies and moths and birds so adorned is small. The 

 lapwing and the dove are among birds shot over with 

 " a livelier iris " at the courting season, though 

 now and then one of the warblers takes on a faint 

 flush of it, and I have seen it on the wing of the 

 clouded-yellow butterfly. Why are these iridescent 

 glows so much more general in hot climes and among 

 the birds and butterflies of the Tropics ? I imagine 



