CHAPTER XVI. ' - 
HUMMING-BIRDS. 
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 r 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 
