CHAPTER XVI. 



HUMMING- BIEDS. 



Humming-birds are perhaps the very loveliest things 

 in nature, and many celebrated writers have exhausted 

 their descriptive powers in vain efforts to picture 

 them to the imagination. The temptation was 

 certainly great, after describing the rich setting of 

 tropical foliage and flower, to speak at length of 

 the wonderful gem contained within it ; but they 

 would in this case have been wise to imitate that 

 modest novel-writer who introduced a blank space 

 on the page where the description of his matchless 

 heroine should have appeared. After all that has 

 been written, the first sight of a living humming-bird, 

 so unlike in its beauty all other beautiful things, 

 comes like a revelation to the mind. To give any 

 true conception of it by means of mere word-painting 

 is not more impossible than it would be to bottle 

 up a supply of the " living sunbeams " themselves, 

 and convey them across the Atlantic to scatter them 

 in a sparkling shower over the face of England. 



Doubtless many who have never seen them in a 

 state of nature imagine that a tolerably correct idea 

 of their appearance can be gained from Gould's 

 colossal monograph. The pictures there, however, 

 only represent dead humming-birds. A dead robin 



