186 THE COMBAT. 
elephant, the ancient mammoth, would perish defenceless against a 
million of deadly darts). Who will brave them? The eagle or the 
condor? No; a people far more mighty 
the intrepid and the in- 
numerable legion of fly-catchers. 
Humming-birds, colibris, and their brothers of every hue, live 
with impunity in these gleaming solitudes where danger lurks 
on every side, among the most venomous insects, and upon those 
mournful plants whose very shade kills. One of them (crested, 
green and blue), in the Antilles, suspends his nest to the most 
terrible and fatal of trees, to the spectre whose fatal glance seems to 
freeze your blood for ever, to the deadly manchineal. 
Wonder of wonders! It is this parroquet which boldly crops the 
fruits of the fearful tree, feeds upon them, assumes their livery, and 
appears, from its sinister green, to draw the metallic lustre of its 
triumphant wings. 
Life in these winged flames, the humming-bird and the colibri, 
is so glowing, so intense, that it dares every poison. They beat their 
wings with such swiftness that the eye cannot count the pulsations ; 
yet, meanwhile, the bird seems motionless completely inert and inactive. 
