1 86 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



those unlovely mementoes of death in their gay 

 plumes ? Who does not shudder, albeit not with 

 fear, to see the wild cat, filled with straw, yawning 

 horribly, and trying to frighten the spectator with 

 its crockery glare ? I shall never forget the first 

 sight I had of the late Mr. Gould's collection of 

 humming-birds (now in the National Museum), 

 shown to me by the naturalist himself, who 

 evidently took considerable pride in the work of 

 his hands. I had just left tropical nature behind 

 me across the Atlantic, and the unexpected meeting 

 with a transcript of it in a dusty room in Bedford 

 Square gave me a distinct shock. Those pellets of 

 dead feathers, which had long ceased to sparkle and 

 shine, stuck with^ wires not invisible over blos- 

 soming cloth and tinsel bushes, how melancholy 

 they made me feel ! 



Considering the bright colour and great splendour 

 of some eyes, particularly in birds, it seems pro- 

 bable that in these cases the organ has a twofold 

 use : first and chiefly, to see ; secondly, to intimi- 

 date an adversary with those luminous mirrors, in 

 which all the dangerous fury of a creature brought 

 to bay is seen depicted. Throughout nature the 

 dark eye predominates; and there is certainly a 

 great depth of fierceness in the dark eye of a bird 

 of prey ; but its effect is less than that produced by 

 the vividly- coloured eye, or even of the white eye 

 of some raptorial species, as, for instance, of the 

 common South American hawk, Asturina pucherani. 

 Violent emotions are associated in our minds 



