AFRICAN SUN-BIRDS. 143 



great fleshy stems, and flowers that look a little 

 like a star-fish. The smell of the flowers is by no 

 means fragrant. It resembles the odour of decay- 

 ing meat; and on that account the flower is called 

 "the carrion-flower." 



Here, too, growing everywhere, is the fig- 

 marigold, with its bright-coloured petals, and its 

 roots that can not only hold fast to the shifting 

 sand, but draw nourishment from it. 



But amid the profusion of flowers, none are 

 more numerous than the heaths. Like the mari- 

 golds, they grow everywhere, arid they will clothe 

 the barest and most barren rock with beauty. 



The flowers of the heath vary in shape as they 

 do in colour. They are cup-shaped, or bell-shaped, 

 or trumpet-shaped ; and they are red, and green, 

 and yellow, and purple every tint, in fact, but blue. 



Round the larger flowers are usually swarms of 

 birds and insects. Here are butterflies richly clad, 

 buzzing hosts of bees, and, more beautiful than all, 

 the tiny Sun-Bird, scarcely larger than the butter- 

 fly, and which comes to perch on the edge of some 

 velvet petal. 



