74 TlMEHRl. 
wood to meet you face to face — in a life and death 
struggle. But amongst the branches above you, flash 
in the golden sunshine birds that literally blaze with 
bright colours — orange, crimson, purple, blue, green, 
darkest black and fairest white, all are blended and 
varied in their plumage — but not a single note can their 
throats give forth. Sometimes, however, in the winter 
months, you may suddenly hear a solitary burst of song, 
all the richer and fuller for its rarity. This is from the 
throat of a visitor from Florida's flowery shores. Around 
you flit the little gorgeous humming birds like living 
jewels, and great butterflies with their wide spread 
wings exquisitely variegated. 
And now the curtains of the night are drawn close 
before the windows of heaven, with the rapidity 
peculiar to the tropics, and darkness is upon us. Above, 
one by one, the stars begin to stud the purple canopy of 
heaven, stealthily shooting their soft radiance through 
the interlacing boughs. Beneath and around, by 
hundreds, little miniature stars begin to twinkle, and, as 
the darkness deepens, they rise on fairy wings and 
sweep about like a whirlwind of light. Night is no 
longer gloomy — its darkness is superseded by a flood 
of living, breathing light ! One begins to think, in- 
voluntarily sinking into a rapt, poetic contemplation, 
that if, whilst the nights certify each other, the stars 
in the solitudes of Infinity declare the glory of God 
to man, how much more to the purpose is that glory 
declared by these living stars, here, in the midst of 
Cuba's primseval forests. The practice of the Cuban 
belles, of pinning these little creatures amid the wav- 
ing tresses of their black hair and upon the skirts 
