LIFE IN THE TROPICAL FORESTS. 
177 
brilliant than formidable; some in embrowned steel, shot with yellow 
—others in silken hoods, embroidered with black velvet; these with 
fine dashes of tawny silk on a rich mahogany ground ; those in pome¬ 
granate-coloured velvet lit up with gold; others in luminous, indescrib¬ 
able azures, relieved by jet-black beads; and others, again, bright in 
metallic streaks alternating with heavy velvet. 
It was as if they wished to say:— 
“We in ourselves are the whole of Nature. If she perishes, we shall 
enact a drama, and personate all her creations. For if you look for 
rich furry garb, behold us here in mantles such as a Russian czarina 
never wore. Do you wish for feathers ? behold us radiant in plumage 
which the humming-bird cannot equal; or if you prefer leaves, we can 
imitate them so as to deceive your eye. Even wood—in fact, all kinds 
of substances—there is nothing which we cannot imitate. Take, I pray 
you, this little twig, and hold it in your hand,— it is an insect!” 
Then I was fairly conquered. I made a humble reverence to a 
people so redoubtable; with a burning brain I issued from the magic 
cave; and for a long time afterwards the sparkling scintillating masks 
danced and whirled around me, pursuing me, and maintaining on my 
retina their wild, strange revel. 
And yet I had seen them only in cases and in boxes, as dead as in 
nature they were ardent and restless. What would have been my 
impression if I had seen them alive, and in motion,—especially in the 
burning climes where they abound and superabound,—where every¬ 
thing is in harmony with them,—where the air, the water, the flora, 
impregnated with prolific flames, rival the keen ardour of the animal 
hosts in the madness of love, of production precipitated and incessantly 
renewed by impatient death ? 
The American forests of Brazil and Guiana are the formidable fur¬ 
naces in which the great exchange of life is uninterruptedly carried 
on. The fantastic faery of the vegetable kingdom is in accord with 
that of the animated forces. Savage, harsh, and plaintive cries—not 
songs—form the woodland concert. Strange voices of birds, in the 
woods and the savannahs, relieve each other,—hoarse and vibrating, 
but regular, as if to mark the hours. They are the clock of the desert. 
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