 Chapter 9. Hermit Hummingbird and Two Other Ones I told you that as soon as the sun's light fell upon the earth, all the sunbeams that had been asleep there woke up and were changed into hummingbirds. But there was just one sunbeam who had gone to sleep in a cave, and when he woke up it was quite dark, and so he was changed into a hummingbird without any colors. And when his brother hummingbirds saw him they laughed at him and called him a hermit. It was very wrong of them to do so, for it was not his fault that he was brown. There is nothing wrong in going to sleep in a cave, and of course he could not tell what would happen. So they thought he looked ridiculous, coming out of it all brown like a hermit. I don't think that made him ridiculous really, but even if it did, they should not have laughed at him. We should not laugh at people because they are ridiculous. It makes them unhappy, and besides, we may be sure that in some way or other we are just as ridiculous as they are. We may not know in what way. That only shows how ignorant we are. It is best not to laugh at other people. If we want to laugh at anyone, we can always laugh at ourselves. Now the poor hummingbird was unhappy because he alone had no colors, and because all the other hummingbirds laughed at him. He complained of it to the son who was his father, and explained how it happened. It is unfortunate, said the son. But since I was unable to shine upon you when you awoke, I cannot give you my own livery to wear now. But do not be unhappy. The world is full of brightness and beauty, and if you go about asking for some of it from those who have it, none of them will refuse you when they know that you are one of my children. They will grant it to you for the love of me, for I am loved of all that live upon the earth. In this way, though I cannot clothe you directly from myself, it will come to the same thing in the end, for it is through me that all things have their beauty, so that in having what was theirs, you will have what is mine, and still you will be a living sunbeam. Only do not ask any of your brother hummingbirds to give you anything, because then you will not be under any obligation to them. Your mother will explain to you what being under an obligation is, and how very many you are under her. So the poor hummingbird went about through the world asking all the beautiful things in it for some of their beauty, and not one that he had asked refused him for the love of his father the sun. He begged of the clouds at sunset, when they were all crimson light, and at sunrise when they were all topaz and amber, and all three of these lovely colors fell upon his throat and struggled for the mastery, like the green and blue on the breast of that other hummingbird that I have told you about. Then he begged of the bluest stars in the sky, and just on the outer edge of his now lovely throat, on that edge of that shining gorget, there fell such a blue as made one feel in heaven only to look at it. After that he begged of the sea that the sun was shining on in the morning, and now his head was of the loveliest pale sea green, and then again he begged of it a little later in the day, and his back became a darker green, almost if not quite as lovely as the lovely one on his head. Thus he went about the world begging and asking, and he did not forget either the jewels or the flowers or the colors that live in the rainbow, and at the end of the day the hummingbird that had been all brown, and that his brothers had called him a hermit was one of the loveliest of all the hummingbirds, and his English name, we won't trouble you about the Latin one, was the all glorious hummingbird. He was not called a hermit any more after that, but those hummingbirds that had called him one and laughed at him when he was brown were changed into hermits themselves. This is how there came to be hermit hummingbirds in the world, and one of them is the one that surprised you so much when I described him to you, because he was all brown. They are all of them brown, but you must not laugh at them for all that, even though they did at their brother. They have their punishment, and it is bad enough to be punished and made all brown without being laughed at about it as well. Now of course as all the hermit hummingbirds are brown, it would be no use to describe them to you one at a time like the others. Instead of that I will tell you about some more hummingbirds who are pretty, and who came to be what they are like now in some curious way or other, which had nothing to do with their having once been sunbeams. One of these is the snow cap. He is very small, almost as small as the smallest of the hummingbirds. And you know how small that is. And although he is not exactly brown, still he is not at all a brilliant bird for a hummingbird. What makes him so pretty is this. First of all, the whole crown of his head is of a beautiful pure silky white, which makes it look as if a large soft snowflake had fallen upon it. And then when he spreads out his tail like a fan, which you may be sure he knows how to do, there are two white patches upon it as well, which look like two smaller snowflakes. It is not many hummingbirds who are ornamented in that way. How did this one get those white patches, and are they really snowflakes that fell upon him? You shall hear. Once they were not white at all, those patches, but colored with all the colors of the rainbow, and more brilliant than anything you could possibly think of, more brilliant even than any other color that is upon any other hummingbird. Indeed, they were so brilliant that no one could look at them, and that made the hummingbird very proud indeed. Could my rivals have looked at me, he said? They could never have confessed my superiority, however plainly they must have seen it. Not to be able to look at me is in itself a confession. They are dazzled, and well they should be, for to look at me is like looking at the sun itself. Surely there is no earthly brightness that I do not outshine. And as the proud bird said this he looked up, and there far above him in the blue dome of the sky, where the snows of the mighty mountain Chimborazo, and in their white dazzling purity they seemed even brighter than himself. But instead of being humbled, the hummingbird only felt insulted and resolved to do something decisive. I would thaw those white robes of his, he said. My brightness shall burn them away, and there shall be no more snow in the world. He was just a little larger than a hummingbee. So up this hummingbird flew right on to the top of Chimborazo, the great high mountain where there was snow everywhere. Have you come to thaw me, said the snow, as it fell around him? That is ridiculous. We shall see which one of us is best able to extinguish the other. With that one snowflake fell upon his head and two more upon his tail, just over those three patches that had been so marvelously bright. He tried to shake them off, but he could not. They stayed there, and instead of having been able to thaw them, it was they who put his brightness quite out. All those wonderful colors were gone now, and there was only the snow white. Fly back, said the snow, or I will quite cover you. You have lost that of which you were so proud, but you have me in exchange. Fly back and be a wiser bird for the future." So the hummingbird flew back ashamed and crestfallen and feared to show himself. What will the other say when they see me, he thought? But when the other hummingbirds saw him, they all cried out, Oh, look what beautiful bird is that that has come to dwell among us. What an exquisite white! Surely he has been to the top of Chimborazo and brought down some of its snow upon him. How pure and how lovely! Yes, they could look at him now, and they thought him more beautiful than when they were blinded and dazzled. That is how that hummingbird got his snow-white patches. He had no colors now with which to out-rival the other hummingbirds, but he could put up with that, for the white snow was lovelier than them all. And then there is the hummingbird that the Indians call the jewel-flower sunrise and sunset hummingbird. Only they have one word for it which makes it sound better. I have forgotten what his English name is. I am not quite sure if he has one. This hummingbird was very beautiful to begin with, so beautiful indeed that the flowers, as he hovered over them, fell in love with him and wished to give him their colors to wear, for their sakes. But the hummingbird did not want their colors, for he thought his own were much more beautiful. If you sparkle like jewels, he said, as well as being soft and bright, then it would be different. But your beauty is too homely. You are not sufficiently refulgent. That was a word he was fond of, for he had heard it applied to himself. Your mother will tell you what it means. So the flowers prayed to the sun from whom they had their beautiful colors, and the sun made them like jewels, jewels of the rose and the violet, of the lily and the daffodil, the sunflower, the pink and carnation. Perhaps they were not just the same flowers as those, for they grew in America, but they had all their colors and many more. That is an improvement, certainly, said the hummingbird, when he had looked at them. You are much more beautiful now, but you remain the same all day long. It is very different with the sky. Every morning and evening, when the sun rises and sets, she has quite a special beauty, and it is only then that she can be said to be refulgent. If it were so with you, then I might take you, but I do not care for flowers who have no sunrise or sunset. So the flowers prayed to the sun again, and he made them as much more beautiful when he rose and set at morning and evening as the sky is, then in the east and the west. And when the hummingbirds saw that they were really refulgent, he took all their colors, and for a little while the flowers were quite pale, and only got bright again by degrees. But they never flashed and sparkled like jewels anymore, and there was never another flower sunrise or another flower sunset. The hummingbird kept all that for himself. He never gave any of it back to the flowers. It was not very generous of him. I think he was going to be punished for it, but somehow or other it was forgotten. Punishments do get forgotten, sometimes almost as often perhaps as rewards. Those are just a few of the beautiful hummingbirds that there are in the world, and the new world that Columbus discovered, but as you know there are more than 400 different kinds, and numbers of them are just as beautiful. Some perhaps even more beautiful than those I have told you about, and you may be sure that they know exactly what to do with their beauty, how to raise up their crests and fanned out their tails and ruffle out their gorgats and tippets, and the way to make them look most magnificent, and give the greatest possible pleasure to their wives who are all of them hermits, poor plain hummingbirds, just as the birds of the paradise do for their wives who are hermits too. And do you know that when two gentlemen hummingbirds are both trying to please the same lady, but that of course is before she has married either of them, they very often fight, and it is then that they gleam and flash and sparkle more brilliantly than at any other time. Ah, what a wonderful sight that must be to see. Those fights between little fiery winged meteors, those dual combats in the air, diamonds and rubies, and sapphire and topaz and emerald and amethyst, all angry with each other shooting out sparks at each other, trying to blind each other, to flash each other down. Ah, those are fiery battles indeed, and yet when they are over, you will think it wonderful not one hummingbird has been burnt up by another one. No hummingbirds do not kill each other, they do not even hurt each other very much, they are only angry, and even that does not last very long. We are not very angry with the poor hummingbirds, I even think we must be fond of them, for there is really hardly one that we have not called by some pretty name, though not nearly so pretty as itself, and yet we kill them. We take away their bright little gem-like lives that are so lovely and so happy. The people who live in those countries make very fine nets, as fine and delicate as those that ladies use for their hair, and put them over the flowers or the shrubs that the hummingbirds come to so that they get entangled in them and cannot fly away. Then when they come and find them, they kill them. Could you kill a living sunbeam, and send their skins over here to be put into the hats of women whose hearts the wicked little demon has frozen? Into hats? Ah, I think if one of those poor frozen-hearted women could see a hummingbird sitting alive in its own little fairy nest, she would blush. Yes, blush to think of it in her hat, even though she wore a pretty one and was pretty herself, too. For I must tell you that the nest that hummingbirds make are so pretty and graceful and delicate that one might almost think that they had been made by the fairies, and indeed the Indians say that the fairies do make them, and give them to the hummingbirds. But that is not really true. Hummingbirds make their own nests, like other birds, though I cannot help thinking that sometimes the fairies must sit in them. Yes, they sit and swing in them sometimes, I feel sure, in the warm, tropic nights when the stars are set thick in the sky, and the fireflies make stars in the air. For they hang like little cradles from the tips of the leaves of palm trees, or from the ends of long, dangling creepers or tendrils, or even from the drooping petal of a flower. They are made of fine webs of spiders, all plated in woven, or of down that is like our thistle down, but thicker and softer and silkier. And you may think of everything that is soft and delicate and graceful and fragile and fairy-like, but when you see a hummingbird's nest, you will think them all course, yes, course by comparison. And to think of that bright little glittering thing sitting there alive and warm in its warm little soft fairy nest, and then to think of it in a hat, and dead. Oh, dear, dusty too, I feel sure. Oh, dear, but it is all the fault of that most wicked little demon, and you are going to set it right. Now perhaps you will wonder why there has been nothing about promises yet, for there have been thirteen hummingbirds in the two last chapters, and not a single promise about any of them. But then what would be the use of promising about thirteen when there are four hundred and more? It would be even so much better, I think, to promise about all the four hundred and more together, and that is what I want you to ask your mother to do. All those little glittering, Julie fairy-like things will go on living and being happy, will go on glittering and gleaming, flashing through the air, sparkling amongst the flowers, sitting and shining in dear little soft swinging cradles on the tips of broad, green palm leaves, or the petals of fair drooping flowers. They will go on being living sunbeams then, not poor, dead, dusty ones in hats, but it will be you who will have done this. You who will have kept sunbeams alive in the world, instead of letting them be killed and go out of it forever. Yes, it will be you and your dear mother. So now you must say to your dear mother, Oh mother, do promise never to wear a hat that has a hummingbird in it. Say it quickly and with ever so many kisses. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Beautiful Birds This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Jennifer Painter Beautiful Birds by Edmund Sellus Chapter 10 The Cock of the Rock and the Liar Bird Well, I have told you about the hummingbirds and the birds of paradise, which are the most beautiful birds that there are in the world. Now I will tell you about just a few other ones which are very beautiful, although they are not quite so beautiful as those are. One of them is the Cock of the Rock, a bird which lives in South America, where the hummingbirds live. There are three kinds and they are all handsome, but the handsomest eye-ping is the one that is called the Blood Red Cock of the Rock. It is about the size of a small pigeon and of the most wonderful blood red colour you can imagine. You would think when you saw it first that it had not one feather on the whole of its body that was not of this brilliant crimson, but after a little, when your eyes are not so dazzle, you see that its wings and tail are not red but brown. Only when the wings are shut they are almost quite covered up by the flaming feathers of the back. And just on one part, that part which we should call the shoulders, they are red too. A scarlet bird, a crimson bird, that is what you would say first if you were to see this wonderful cock of the rock, and then all at once you would cry out, oh, but where is his beak? Why? He has no beak. Yes, and you might almost say, where is his head? For you don't see that either. At least you only see the back of it. All the rest and the beak too is hidden in a wonderful crest of crimson feathers that almost looks like the head itself. Only it is a little too big for that. This crest is just the shape of a tea cosy so that it looks as if someone had put a little tea cosy made of the most splendid blood red, fiery crimson sunset feathers right over the bird's head and covered it quite up. You see no beak at all and it does look so funny to see a bird without a beak almost as funny as it would to see a beak without a bird. The two other kinds of cock of the rock are very handsome birds too. One of them has all its plumage orange colour instead of crimson and the other is of a colour between orange and crimson. So if you were travelling from one part of South America to another it would seem as if the same bird was getting brighter and brighter or darker and darker all the way. For the three different kinds do not live in the same parts of the country but in different parts that join each other. Only of course you would have to go in the right direction which would be first through the forests of British Guiana then along the banks of the Great River Amazon which is the largest river in the world then up the mountains of Peru and then still higher up those of Ecuador. Or you might start from Ecuador and go all the way to British Guiana. If you get an atlas and look for the map of South America your mother will soon show you where all these places are. Now after what you know about the hummingbirds and the birds of paradise you will not be surprised to hear that this brilliant crimson or orange coloured bird has quite a sober coloured wife and that he is as careful to please her as they are by showing her his beautiful bright plumage in all the ways in which it looks best. In fact he is so very careful about it that I feel quite sure he pleases himself by doing so at the same time. You know now that male birds dance when they show their fine feathers to their wives in sweethearts for I have told you about the Succarellis of the Great Bird of Paradise and the way in which those other birds of paradise dance while the two travellers were watching them. But some birds have still more wonderful dances than these. At least they behave in a way that is even more like real dancing. Now the cock of the rock is a very fine dancer indeed and he has a regular place to dance and play in which we may call his ballroom or his drawing room or his playground whichever name we like best. He chooses it in some part of the forest where it is a little open and where the ground is soft and mossy and here every day a number of birds assemble some males and some females for of course the hen birds come too there would be nothing to dance for without them. Then first one of the cocks walks out into the middle of the open space and begins to dance. He flutters and waves his wings moves his head with its wonderful crimson tea cosy from side to side and hops about with the queerest little jumpy steps you ever saw. As he goes on he gets more and more excited springs higher and higher into the air waves his wings more and more violently and shakes his head as if he were trying to shake off the tea cosy so as to have a cup of tea to refresh himself. All the other birds stand and look at him criticise his performance turn their heads towards each other and make remarks you may be sure oh elegant exclaims a young hen clock of the rock what spring what elasticity really he is a very fine performer. I have seen finer ones in my time says an older hen in fact quite an elderly bird one could judge better however if there was someone else to compare him with he seems to be having it all his own way in my time there was more emulation amongst male birds and you may be sure that as soon as she says that ever so many other cocks of the rock step out into the ring there they are all dancing together all springing and jumping all waving their wings and all trying to shake the tea cosies off their heads so as to have a cup of tea for refreshment after all that exercise perhaps you will say that that is nonsense because there is no teapot under the tea cosy but remember that no one has ever taken that tea cosy off how can you tell what is under a tea cosy until you take it off your mother will tell you that this is only fun but what a strange curious dance it is this wonderful bird dance all in the wild lonely forest oh how interesting it would be to see it to find out one of those little open places where the moss is all pressed smooth and firm and then to hide somewhere near and wait there quietly quietly without making a sound all alone in the great wild lonely forest until at last at last there is a crimson flash amongst the tree trunks and then another and another as bird after bird comes flying or walking to the ballroom and the dance begins and sometimes you would see them chasing each other through the forest all very excited and often clinging to the trunks of the trees and spreading and ruffling out their lovely plumage so as to show it to each other each one seeming to say I think mine is finer than yours perhaps I may be mistaken but I think so what beautiful birds and what funny birds and what interesting things they do whilst they are alive as soon as they are dead they are not funny or interesting anymore and they are only beautiful as a shawl or a piece of embroidery is beautiful it is dead beauty then the beauty of life is the highest beauty of all is gone out of them now you can see many and many beautiful things that never had life in them though some such as beautiful statues and pictures imitate life so marvellously that you would almost think they were alive and you could admire these beautiful things and take pleasure in looking at them without having to feel sorry that they once were alive and happy but have been killed for you to look at surely you would not wish a beautiful happy bird to be killed just for you to look at you would not even wish it to be put in a cage and kept alive in a way in which it could not be happy no you would rather know that it was alive and happy in its own country and only imagine what it was like and how beautiful it was that is much the best way of seeing creatures if we have no other way without killing them or putting them in prison to imagine them and there is ever so much more pleasure in imagining creatures alive and happy than in seeing them dead or wretched it is a very fine thing I can tell you to imagine and some people can do it a great deal better than others there are people who cannot do it at all but we do not want birds killed for stupid persons people who cannot imagine can do capital without seeing either just as well as people who can imagine only in another way now just ask your mother to promise not to wear any hat as the feathers of a beautiful cock of the rock in it in Australia oh but perhaps you want to know why this handsome bird is called the cock of the rock such a very funny name well although it lives in forests and flies about amongst the trees yet some of these forests are on the sides of mountains so of course there are rocks all about the cock of the rock there are rocks to perch upon a very high one so when the old travellers first saw it perched up there and looking such a fine bird they called it a cock of the rock and almost expected to hear it crow at least if this is not the right explanation it is the only one I can think of the Indians may have another one but if they have I cannot tell it to you I do not know what it is perhaps if I were to think a little I should know or else I could imagine it but I have no time to think or imagine just at present I want to get on in Australia the great island continent the island that is so large that we call it a continent there is a wonderful bird called the lyre bird it is one of the most wonderful beautiful birds that there is in the world and all its wonder and all its beauty lies in its tail this wonderful tail as I'm sure you will guess from the name of the bird is shaped like a lyre though it is much more beautiful than any lyre ever was even the one that Apollo played on you know I dare say what a lyre is a kind of harp with a very graceful shape curving first out and then in and then out again on each side and with the strings in the centre now the lyre bird has on each side of its tail two beautiful broad feathers that curve in this way and are of a pretty chestnut colour with transparent spaces all the way down these are the two outer tail feathers and they are like the two sides of a lyre the solid part of it which is held in the hand and which we call the framework then for the strings which as you know are stretched across the hollow space within the framework not from side to side but lengthways from one end to the other the lyre bird has a number of most beautiful thin graceful feathers more graceful and delicate than the strings of any harp only instead of being straight like harp strings these feathers are curved and droop over to each side in a most graceful way and instead of keeping inside the two broad feathers the sides of the lyre they come a long way past them and instead of being only four which is the number of strings that a lyre has there are ever so many of them more than a dozen I feel sure and if you could see these feathers and the way they are made oh you would think them wonderful you know that on each side of the quill of most feathers there is what is called the web which we have talked about and this web is made of a number of little light delicate sprays like miniature feathers which we call barbs and these are kept close together by having a lot of little tiddly tiny hooks those such soft little things don't look like hooks a bit which are called barbules with which they catch hold of each other and won't let each other go that is why the web of a feather on each side of the quill is so smooth and even but now in these wonderful feathers of the lyre bird little delicate things the barbs which make the webs are much fewer than in ordinary feathers and they have no little hooks to catch hold of each other with and instead of being all together they are a quarter of an inch apart and wave about each by itself looking like very delicate threads floating from the long slender quill of the feather and that too is how those beautiful plume feathers of paradise have formed and you have seen something like it in the long ones of the peacocks tail the tail of the lyre bird is not so grand perhaps as that of the peacock but it is more graceful and delicate and on the whole I think for on such points one can never be sure it is still more wonderful but now is it not very strange that any bird should have a tail like that a tail that is shaped like Apollo's lyre well I will tell you how it happened for it is one of those things that requires an explanation and is lucky once the great god Apollo who is the god of music and song was walking in Australia and playing upon his lyre now I must tell you at that time it was a very long time ago the lyre bird had not a tail like it has now but quite an ordinary one so as it is only its tail that is extraordinary it was quite an ordinary bird but although it was ordinary in appearance it was extremely musical as it is now I must tell you that and also a wonderful imitator of every sound that can be made the lyre bird can imitate the different notes of other birds as well as the barking of dogs the mewing of cats and the conversation of people so when it heard Apollo playing so sweetly on his lyre it was quite enraptured and began to imitate it so cleverly that you would have thought there were two apollos playing on two lyres all the other birds and creatures were delighted at this of course two good things are better than only one but for some reason or other which I cannot quite explain Apollo was not nearly so pleased in fact he became angry and so angry that he threw his lyre at the poor bird who had so appreciated his music and the lyre hit it on the tail as it ran away and cut it right off of course when the lyre bird found it had no tail it was in a terrible state and it came to Apollo and said it was because I loved your music that I tried to imitate it I failed no doubt for who can sing as Apollo but still it is a hard price to have to pay for my admiration and when Apollo heard that he was so sorry for what he had done and so pleased with the way in which the lyre bird had explained things that he said to it well I will make amends and what I give shall be better than what I took away the lyre which I threw at you you shall keep but it shall be of feathers and even more beautiful than my own you shall not play on it for none but myself must do that but you shall always be a most musical bird now and able to imitate any sound that you hear even my own playing that power I will not take away from you I will even increase it and from this time forth you shall be called the lyre bird in honour of your priority and good taste that is how the lyre bird got its tail and why it is now a very beautiful as well as a very musical bird but what its tail was like before Apollo gave it the one it has now that I cannot tell you for it has never been known to elude to the subject and it would hardly do to ask it we only know that it was quite ordinary but do you know Apollo never quite liked the lyre birds imitating him even though he had told it that it might and so not so very long afterwards he left the country he went to Greece it was a very long time ago and he has not gone back to Australia yet now you may be sure that a bird with a tail like that has his playing ground where he may come and show it to his wife or sweetheart for it is only the male bird who has it like the others though really I cannot think what Apollo was about to give it to the hen as well for he was always a very polite god the lyre birds play ground is a small round hillop which he makes all himself and there he will come and walk about raising his magnificent tail right up into the air and spreading it out in the most beautiful and graceful way and as he does this he will sing so beautifully sometimes his own notes which are very pretty ones and sometimes those of other birds all of which he can imitate quite well but of course as Apollo has left Australia he cannot imitate him anymore now and after such a long time he has forgotten what he learnt unless indeed his own notes are what Apollo used to play but if that is the case he must have left off singing his old song and I do not think he would have done that this wonderful bird builds a wonderful nest with a roof to it so that he can get right inside it and be quite hidden from sight tail and all although he is so large almost as large as a pheasant even without counting his tail as a rule it is only little birds that make nests like that and not big ones the lion bird's nest is something like the one that our little wren makes which perhaps you have seen only of course ever so much bigger only one egg is laid in it and out of it comes one of the queerest little birds you can imagine all covered with white fluffy down and with no tail at all that you can see so that you would never think he was going to grow into a lion bird it takes him four years to get that wonderful tail Apollo did not mean him to have it until he was quite grown up it is not a thing to be entrusted to children now you must not think that the lion bird always holds his tail up in the air for when he walks through the thick bushes he has to carry it as a pheasant does and I think you know how that is as soon as he wants to show it to his wife or his sweetheart up it goes and oh it does look so beautiful but now if it were not for that promise which your mother is going to make you there would very soon be no more of these wonderful birds with their wonderful and beautiful tails left in Australia which would mean that there would be none in the whole world for Australia is the only country in the world where they are found people like much better to see that beautiful tail in their rooms where it will soon get spoiled and dusty or to put some feathers of it in their hats than to know that the bird is running about with it alive and happy holding it down like a pheasance when he walks through the bushes but raising it in the air when he stands on his little hillop for the hen lion bird to see and singing her a song as well people who live in Australia and there are a great many people who live there might often see it doing that if they were to take a little trouble they take a great deal of trouble to kill it and even if they could not see it they would hear its beautiful song but they like much better to kill it so that there may be a little less song and beauty and happiness in the world and all because of the wicked little demon with the correct suit of clothes but all this is going to be altered and you are going to alter it just run to your mother wherever she is if she is not with you now and ask her to promise ever so faithfully never to have anything whatever to do with a hat that has so much as one single feather of a lion bird in it End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of Beautiful Birds This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Elsie Sawan Beautiful Birds by Edmund Sellus Chapter 11 The Resplendent Trogon in the Argus Pheasant One of the most beautiful birds in the world more beautiful even than some of the birds of paradise and then some of the hummingbirds even those that are not hermits is the lovely Trogon of Mexico but first I must tell you that there are a great many birds called Trogons that live in other parts of America as well as in Mexico and in other parts of the world as well as in America but the most beautiful of all of them which is the only one I shall have time to tell you about is the resplendent Trogon or Caitsal for that is what the Indians call it and it is only found in Mexico which you know is in North America only right down at the southern end of it where there are a good many hummingbirds too there are many more hummingbirds in South America than in North America it is the hot tropical countries they are fond of you see they like to be with their brothers the sunbeams this Mexico is such an interesting country it belongs now to the Spaniards whom I dare say you have heard about but once it belonged to quite a different people an old people who had been there for hundreds and hundreds of years long before Columbus discovered America these people were civilized only in a different way to ourselves they did not wear the kind of clothes that we do but only light linen things dyed all sorts of colors which were prettier and suited the climate they had many cities as we have though they were built in a different way and the largest was built all over a great lake with bridges going from one side of it to another one can build houses in the water you know for there is Venice in Italy in Rotterdam and Holland which are both built in the sea in which your mother will tell you about these people who were called Aztecs were very clever workmen and such wonderful goldsmiths and silversmiths especially that they used to make imitation gardens with all sorts of flowers beaten out of gold and silver then they used feathers as we do a paint box to make pictures of things with they would paint houses and ships and men and boats and landscapes with them putting the right colored feathers just where they were wanted blue ones for the sky, green ones for the grass and so on for the wicked little demon knew of those people just as well as he knows of us and he had taught them to kill birds too only as they had no guns they could not kill nearly so many of them as we can but there was no danger then of a beautiful bird getting rarer and rarer until, outlast it is not to be found in the world anymore which is what happens now with us at least it will if you do not stop it but though it would have been much better to let these birds which were often hummingbirds go on living and flying about and though no picture made with their feathers was nearly so beautiful as the feathers themselves were growing upon them most feather pictures of the old Aztecs were very wonderful things and it is a great pity that there are none of them left now for us to look at nothing could bring the poor birds back to life so we might just as well have had the pictures that they had helped to make and we might have had some other pictures too that these people made for they used to draw things just as we do and when they wanted to describe a thing they would often draw a picture of it instead of only saying what it was like even their writing was all in pictures for when they wanted to write say the word sun or the word house they would draw a little picture of the sun or of a house only so quickly and with such a few strokes of the pen or the paintbrush I don't quite know which it was that it was quite like proper writing of course there are some words that are not so easy to make a picture of as you can try for yourself but wherever it could be done these old Aztecs would do it and if only we had some more of this writing for we have a very little of it we should be able to know a great deal more about this old people who were in America before Columbus came there and what they did and what they thought about and the remarks they made to each other and just think how interesting that would be it is always interesting to know something about people quite different to ourselves who lived a long time ago unfortunately when the Spaniards had conquered these people instead of keeping the things which they had made they burnt them they burnt their houses their temples their cities their picture writings their feather pictures their wonderful flowers until the golden silver they were made of were quite melted their clothes everything even the people themselves and to save time they often burnt the last two together it is a great pity they did this but you see everybody has a plan of doing things and the plan of the Spaniards was to burn the people they conquered and everything belonging to them but was it not horribly cruel oh most horribly but so it is to shoot seagulls and then cut off their wings before they are dead and throw them back into the sea to drown there or bleed to death that is what we do and it is horribly cruel too so do not let us think about the cruel things the Spaniards did yet let us think first about the cruel things that are done by people in our own country and try to stop them when we have stopped them all of them then we can think about the Spaniards and some other nations you know there is a proverb which says those who live in glass houses should not throw stones that is generally one of the first proverbs we learn and always the very first we forget I'm afraid that those old Aztecs lived in rather a glass house for they had a plan of cutting people open whilst they were still alive and tearing their hearts out horrible was it not but they did not burn people so when they saw the Spaniards doing so they were shocked at them as for the Spaniards they were shocked at the Aztecs doing this other thing for that had never been their custom so the Aztecs and Spaniards were shocked at each other people are very easily shocked at each other but they are not nearly so easily shocked at themselves now I come to think of it I never remember hearing anyone say I am shocked at myself and yet it would often be a quite sensible remark but what I wanted to tell you about these old Aztecs who lived in Mexico all that time ago was that when the Spaniards came there they were ruled over by a great king named Montezuma and this king amongst many other wonderful things had a great place where he kept all the different kinds of birds that were found in his country a place like that is called an aviary and you may be quite sure that the beautiful troganer Catesaul was one of the birds in King Montezuma's aviary for it was more highly thought of than any other bird in the country let us hope that all the birds in this aviary had nice large places to be in with trees and flowers and everything that they wanted and as it was a king's aviary I dare say they had well now I will tell you what this beautiful bird the Catesaul resplendent trogan that used to be in King Montezuma's aviary is like it is about the size of a turtle dove but with the most beautiful long curling feathers in its tail and these beautiful feathers and all the feathers on its back and breast and on its head too are of the most lovely rich golden green color really I don't know whether there is more of gold or of green in them but there is just the right quantity of each to make them the most beautiful beautiful feathers you can possibly imagine it is the tail feathers that are the most beautiful for they are so very long the two longest are much longer than those in a pheasant's tail but there are some feathers which begin on the back and lapse softly around the sides one a little way off from the other so that you can see their pretty shapes and these are almost as beautiful although they are ever so much shorter but now there is something funny about those long feathers which I have called the tail feathers and that is that they are not really tail feathers at all they look as if they were but really they are feathers which go over the tail and cover it up so that the real tail is hidden underneath them it is like that though I am sure you never know it with the peacock those beautiful long feathers which we call the tail are not really the tail and you will see that directly if you watch a peacock when he spreads them out for as soon as he does you will see the real tail underneath which is nothing very particular to look at still in both these birds the long feathers look so like the real tail that we may very well call them the tail feathers and we can always explain about it afterwards to show how much we know and do you know these beautiful long golden green feathers of the Kate's doll which we are going to call the tail feathers although we know very well they are not we are so highly valued by these people who used to live in Mexico that no one was ever allowed to kill the bird but only to catch it and cut them off and let it go again so that new ones might grow on it and only the chiefs were allowed to wear its feathers and indeed there would be no great harm in wearing feathers and hats if we got them only in that way only I cannot think what the little demon could have been about in that country a law like that must have made him very angry indeed then besides his splendid tail feathers this beautiful bird has a crest on his head which is something like the one of the cock of the rock has on his ford is of the same T-Cosi shape only it is green instead of crimson and it does not quite cover up the beak so perhaps you will think that as the cock of the rock is all blood red with the T-Cosi crest on his head this beautiful golden green trogan with the T-Cosi on his head is all golden green but no all the lower part of him that part which is hidden when he sits down instead of being golden green is the most splendid vermilion as bright a color although it is not quite the same as the cock of the rocks himself just think golden green and splendidly bright vermilion and you cannot think how beautiful the one looks against the other whether they would look quite so well together in a dress I am not quite sure but your mother would know all about that only you must remember that such a golden green and such a vermilion as this trogan has were never seen together no or separately either in any dress yet these beautiful cait cells live in the forests of Mexico and they like to sit lazily on the branch of a tree and let their beautiful long tails which we know are not really tails hang down underneath it like the funny feathers of the birds of paradise at least the male birds like to do that because the female cait cells have not got those beautiful long feathers although they are very fine birds even without them they are not so handsome as the males but they are not plain like the female hummingbirds or birds of paradise perhaps the male cait cells show off their fine feathers to the females by letting them hang down like that because of course long soft drooping feathers such as they have would not stand up in the air like those of the peacock or the lyre bird very likely they have some other nice way of showing them now although the cait cell are a resplendent trogan is such a magnificent bird he is not so very often seen it is difficult to find him in the dense forest and I wish it was still more difficult than it is for when he is found he is always shot for those beautiful feathers of his when the indian who is looking for him sees him sitting in the way I have told you he hides somewhere near and imitates the cry of the bird when the poor trogan hears it he thinks it is another trogan a friend of his perhaps and so he comes flying to where the sound came from then this deceitful man and I really think it is very contemptible to deceive a bird in that way shoots him and there is one beautiful happy bird less in the world is it not dreadful to think of that in almost every part of the world there are some very beautiful birds to be found and everywhere they are being killed and killed and killed so that they are getting scarcer and scarcer every year if it were not for what your mother has promised you about the lyre bird and what she is going to promise you about this trogan there would soon be no more beautiful lyre birds in Australia and no more beautiful trogons in Mexico how terrible that would be but we have saved the beautiful lyre bird and now we are going to save the beautiful trogan ask your mother oh do ask her to promise most faithfully never to have anything whatever to do with a hat that has any of the feathers shorter long golden greener vermilion of a cate cell a resplendent trogan in it now she has promised and we have saved that beautiful bird as well as a great many others now I will tell you about a very beautiful pheasant the argus pheasant some people may think him the most beautiful one of all and yet he has not the most showy pheasant for the pheasants you know are very showy birds indeed there is the golden pheasant who is dressed in the sun's own livery and the silver pheasant who has a silver white one which is more like the moons but who looks gaudy and smart all the same and the amherst pheasant who manages to be handsomer than both the sun and the moon which is very clever of him and the fireback who is all in a blaze without minding it at all and the impian or monal who looks as if he was made of beaten metal and had just been polished up with a piece of washed leather there is the peacock too for he is really nothing but a large pheasant so you see the pheasants are a handsome family and you may be sure that they know how to appreciate themselves the pheasant that we are going to talk about is quite a large bird not so large as the peacock it is true but with still longer tail feathers and oh what wonderful wings one may say indeed that this bird is all wings and tail but he is principally wings when he spreads them out but even when they are folded they are so very large that he looks quite wrapped up in them and I think he is too partly because of that but still more because they are so very handsome so first I will tell you what these large handsome wings of his are like well in each one there are 25 or 26 very fine long feathers but these feathers are not all so fine or so long as each other 10 of them are about a foot long and these are prettily marked and modeled with all sorts of pretty brown colors whilst down the center of each one there is a pretty blue stripe it is the quill of the feather that makes that stripe for it is blue and looks as if it had been painted so you see even these are pretty feathers but it is the 15 or 16 other ones that are so very beautiful they are much broader and longer than the other 10 the longest are more than twice as long and down each of them just on one side of the great quill in the center there is a row of such wonderful spots there are as large as horse chestnuts big ones I mean and what they look like as a cup and a ball the ball just lying in the cup ready to be sent up only of course the cup has no handle in it you must not think of that for the spots around and do you know the balls look as if they were really balls so that you would think you could take them in your hand and come up into the air and catch them again as they came down they do not look flat at all you know when you try to draw an orange or an apple how difficult it is not to make it look flat like a penny you would make it look flat I know but these wonderful balls on the Argus pheasant's feathers look as if they had all been drawn by a very clever artist as indeed they have been a very clever one who had shaded them properly you know how difficult shading is there are 18 or 20 sometimes as many as 22 of these wonderful spots on each feather but I have not told you yet of what color they are perhaps you will think they are very bright and dazzling no they are not like that at all they are soft not bright and their softness is their beauty all around them at the edge there is a ring of deep soft brown and just inside the ring there is a lighter brown which goes on getting lighter and lighter until in the center it is a pretty soft amber and at the edge of the soft amber there is a pretty white silvery light as if the moon was just coming out from behind an amber cloud so pretty and when the Argus pheasant spreads his wonderful wings out you can see more than a hundred of these wonderful spots on each wing which is more than 200 all together such a sight so soft and so pretty they look shall I tell you what such wings are like? they are like skies where the stars are all moons that float softly among soft brown and amber clouds tipping them all with soft silver for the Argus pheasant is not one of the very brilliant birds of the world no he is not brilliant at all his colors are only soft browns and soft ampers and soft silver whites and yet he is so pretty so beautiful I think he is as pretty as the peacock and when one sees him after the peacock it is a rest for the eye some people might prefer him to the peacock do you wonder at that? it is not so very wonderful there may be a little girl reading this with soft brown hair and soft brown eyes and with nothing golden or gleaming about her and some people besides her father and mother may think her prettier than the little girl who is all golden and gleaming but it is all a matter of taste some like a broad sheet of water dancing in the sunlight and some like quiet streams running under cool mossy banks with trees arching above them where the shadows are cool and deep and where even the sun's peepings are only like brighter shadows people who like that better than the other will like the quiet little girl with the brown hair better than the one who gleams and dazzles and they will like the Argus pheasants better than the peacock and think them both a rest for the eye it is not at all a bad thing to be a rest for the eye I have told you how large the wings of the Argus pheasants are when he spreads them out to show to the hen bird who has nothing like them they look like two banners or two beautiful feather fans the kind of fans that you see eastern queens being fanned with in the pictures then he has a very fine tail two of the feathers in it are very long indeed quite four feet long I should think and as broad as a man's hand if not broader near the base which means where they begin but getting gradually narrower towards the tips on one side these feathers are a soft rich brown with silver white spots and on the other a soft silver gray with silver white spots when the Argus pheasants spreads out his two great wings he takes care to lift up his very fine handsome tail as well so that their two long feathers are quite high in the air so there is his tail going up like a rocket whilst his wings spread out on each side of it like feather fans and his head comes out between them just in the middle and makes a polite bow to the hen that is the right way to do it and the Argus pheasants would rather not do it at all than not do it properly oh he takes a great deal of trouble about it for the hen which is unselfish this beautiful Argus pheasants lives in the Simatra which is a large island of the Malaya archipelago and also in the Malay peninsula and Siam which are both part of the great Asiatic continent as perhaps you know yes that is where he lives but you might walk about there for a very long time without ever once seeing him for the Argus pheasants is a very difficult bird to find he lives in the great thick forests and keeps out of everybody's way one hardly ever does find him but sometimes one finds his drawing room for he has one, like the cock of the rock and the lyre bird and if one waits there long enough I would wait a week if it were necessary one may see him come into it he spends almost all his time in looking after this drawing room and he only sees the hen Argus pheasants when she comes there too to look at him of course he dances in it and spreads out his wonderful wings and lifts up his tail and the way that I have told you the Argus pheasants is very proud of his drawing room he will have it nice and clean with nothing lying about in it so if he finds anything that has no business to be there he picks it up with his beak and throws it outside he has not to open a door to do that his drawing room is only in open space which he keeps nice and smooth so as it is always open it does not want a door to it now I think you will say and I am sure your mother will agree with you that the Argus pheasants does quite right to act in this way and that to keep one's drawing room clean and tidy is a very proper thing to do your mother may be surprised perhaps that it is the male Argus pheasants and not the hen bird that does it but I am sure she will not blame him on that account but I am sorry to say that the wicked little demon has found out a way of making this habit which is such a good one a means of killing him the people who live in that part of the world those yellow people called malees that I have told you of know all about the ways of the Argus pheasants and how he will not have things lying about in his drawing room now there is a great tall weed that grows there called the bamboo which I am sure you have heard of and which your mother will tell you about the malees cut off a piece of this bamboo about two feet long all except about six inches at one end of it till it is almost as thin as writing paper it looks like a piece of ribbon then only as it is very hard as well as thin as edges are quite sharp and able to cut like a razor but the piece at the end which has been left not shaved down they cut into a point so that it makes a peg and this peg that has a ribbon at the end of it they stick into the ground right in the middle of the Argus pheasants drawing room so when the poor Argus pheasants comes into his drawing room he sees something lying on the floor which has no business to be there it may be only a ribbon but that is not the right place for it so he tries to pick it up and throw it outside but it won't come however much he pulls it for the peg at the end is fixed in the ground and he is not strong enough to pull it out at last he gets angry and thinks he will make a great effort he twists the long ribbon round and round his neck just as you would twist a piece of string round and round your hand if you were going to pull it hard then takes hold of it with his beak just above the ground and gives quite a tremendous spring backward you may guess what happens the long peg does not come out of the ground but the ribbon is drawn quite tight around the poor bird's own neck and the sharp edges almost cut his head off now it's not that a most cruel trick to play upon a bird who only wants to keep his drawing room in proper order how would your dear mother like to be treated away for being neat and tidy which I am sure she is but are we going to stop it? this cruel trick of the wicked demon for it was he who thought of it and taught it to the Malays it is not their fault you must not be angry with them any more than with the poor women whose hearts the same demon has frozen we are going to stop it and you know how the Malay only kills the poor Argus pheasant to sell his feathers if they were not wanted he would leave them alone and be beautiful and to dance in a nice tidy drawing room so just ask your mother to promise never to wear hat or anything else that has a feather or even a little piece of a feather of an Argus pheasant in it that was going to be the end of the chapter but there is just something which I have forgotten I am sure you will have been wondering why this beautiful pheasant is called the Argus pheasant and what the word Argus means well I will give you an explanation Argus was the name of a wonderful being a kind monster who had a hundred eyes and who lived a long time ago but he offended the great god Jupiter who had him killed and then Jupiter's wife the goddess Juno who servant he was put all his eyes into the tail of the peacock for the peacock was her favorite bird that is one story but another one says that she did not put them all there but only the bright ones the soft ones those pretty ones that I have been telling you about she put into the wings of another bird that she liked quite as well if not better and that bird became at once the Argus pheasant but now if Argus had only a hundred eyes how is it that they are two hundred or more in the wings of the Argus pheasant to say nothing of those in the tail of the peacock that shows I think quite clearly that he must really have had a great many more and so now when people talk to you of Argus in his hundred eyes you can say a hundred indeed they must have had had three hundred at the very least and then you can tell them why End of Chapter 11 Recording by Elsie Selwyn End of Beautiful Birds by Edmund Celis Chapter 12 of Beautiful Birds this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Elsie Selwyn Beautiful Birds by Edmund Celis Chapter 12 White Egrets, Ospreys, and Ostrich Feathers Chapter 12 White Egrets, Ospreys, and Ostrich Feathers the last bird I'm going to tell you about is the White Egret but do you know I'm not quite sure if he is beautiful enough to be put in a book of Beautiful Birds because of course a book of Beautiful Birds means a book of the most beautiful birds that there are and I'm not quite sure if the White Egret is so beautiful as that at any rate he is not so beautiful as the birds I have been telling you about and there are many other birds in the world that I have not told you about that are more beautiful than he is so perhaps you will wonder why I put him in the book at all but I will soon give you a proper explanation of it and the first place if the White Egret is not one of the most beautiful birds in the world yet at any rate he has some of the most beautiful feathers that any bird has and that alone I think gives him a right to be here because you know fine feathers make fine birds and in the second place this poor bird is so shot and killed and persecuted for these beautiful feathers of his that unless you were to get your mother to make that promise about him there would soon be no such thing as a White Egret left in the world he and his feathers would both be gone but now perhaps you will say that if fine feathers make fine birds then beautiful feathers must make beautiful birds too and so the White Egret must be a beautiful bird oh yes he is you are quite right I did not mean that he was not a beautiful bird at all all I meant was that he was not quite so beautiful as the birds of paradise and the hummingbirds and birds like that birds that look as if they have flown into a jeweler's shop and then flown out again with all the best part of the jewelry upon them whether he is not as beautiful as some of the other birds we have talked about but I will not say which for fear of offending them that I am not quite so sure of but any rate he is beautiful oh yes he is quite a beautiful bird is the White Egret and I will describe him to you I shall not have any colors to tell you about because he is all white which of course you will have guessed from his name but you know how beautiful white can be you will not have forgotten the little hummingbird who was made still more beautiful than he had been before by three snowflakes falling upon him but with this bird it is as if the snow had fallen all over him and covered him up for he is white all over a beautiful soft, silky white as pure and as delicate as the snow itself only his shape perhaps is a little funny at least you might think so for he has a pair of long thin stillty legs and a long thin sneaky neck and a long sharp pointed beak so that all three of these together make him a tall thin stillty bird something like a stork that is you will say for you have seen pictures of storks even if you have not seen one alive in the zoological gardens which is a very bad place for him I think well this bird is something like a stork but he is a great deal more like a heron that long-ligged, long-necked bird that stands for hours in the water waiting for a fish to come near it so that it may catch it and swallow it for the heron you know lives on fish and frogs and things of that sort yes he is very like a heron you know there is a very good reason for that because the white egret is a heron some birds I must tell you have names which are like our surnames and show the family they belong to as long as you only know a boy or girl's christian name Reginald or Bertram or Dorothy or Nora or Wilhelmina you don't know a bit about the family they belong to but as soon as you know their surnames Smith or Brown or Jones or Thompson or Robinson why then you do with birds heron is really a surname only the bird that has it here in England has not a christian name as well unless common is one for he is called the common heron but white egret is a christian name and the surname to it is heron for the white egret belongs to the heron family that is why he is so tall and gaunt and stillty for a heron is always like that it is the family figure and so now when I tell you that he too, fish is the family dish and no heron would think of going without it for long but now let me tell you about those beautiful feathers which the poor white egret has they grow only on his back about the middle of it and droop down to a little way over his tail so that they are a foot or more long you remember what I explained to you about the feathers in the tail of the lyrebird and those that make the plumes and the beautiful birds of paradise how the barbs of the feather on each side of the quail have no barbules to hold them together so they fall apart and wave about like beautiful soft silky threads if you have forgotten then you must look back for it because I should not explain it better here than I do there and besides it would be twice over while these feathers are made in the same way only they are of a pure shining white like all the rest of this bird's plumage and although they are as soft as silk they are stiff at the same time and so smooth that they look like the delicate flickings from a piece of beautiful pure polished ivory imagine a little fountain of ivory threads all shooting up together into the air quite straight at first and then bending over and drooping down in a most delicate graceful way imaginable that is what a plume of those feathers looks like when they have been taken out and tied together but I wish myself that they did not look nearly so beautiful for it is because of those beautiful plumes that the poor bird is being killed and killed and becoming scarcer and scarcer every day for the woman whose hearts the little demon has frozen wear these plumes in their hats and in their hair and they are called ospreys and are very fashionable indeed soldiers too used to wear them in their caps but they have given up doing so it is only the frozen hearted women who are killing the poor white egrets now but ah there are so many of them the women I mean not the egrets I have sat at the entrance of a large concert hall and counted the faces that had these lovely egret plumes these beautiful fashionable ospreys so white and yet so blood stained nodding above them counted them as they came in and as they went out young faces, old faces soft faces, hard faces shriveled faces, puckered faces painted faces plain faces, ugly faces quite dreadful faces ah what numbers of them there were it was quite difficult to count them all again there would be a pretty face and I used to count those separately one, two, three four, five sometimes up to half a dozen that was not so tiring but you see I had to count them all oh wise but wicked little demon who blew his bad powders into the hearts of all the women there were two kinds you know and one of them was vanity now if it had been a man however wicked a one I feel sure that he would have looked about with the pretty faces and who were rather young to blow that powder into but the little demon was wiser in his own wicked way he did not go about looking and looking he blew it into all their hearts and that gave him no trouble at all now I must tell you there are two different kinds of white egrets with these beautiful feathers of the women with the frozen hearts where one is much larger than the other and is called the great white egret he is quite a big bird larger even than our common heron and you know what a big bird he is the other one which is called the small white egret is not more than half the size of the great one but his feathers are the most beautiful so that though he has not nearly so many of them he is worth nearly twice as much money that means of course that the servants of the wicked little demon who shot him and sell his feathers can get nearly twice as much money for them as they can for the feathers of the other one so of course they like shooting him best but they are very glad to shoot the other one the white egret too for even his feathers are worth a great deal now if the little wicked demon had not frozen the hearts of women they would never want to wear feathers that cough the lives of the poor birds to whom they belong because you know women are really so kind then of course those feathers that are so beautiful would not be worth anything as it is called and so men would not shoot the white egrets because they would not be able to sell their feathers I'm afraid they would have no better reason than that because men you know are not kind and pitiful as women are if only their hearts are not frozen but at any rate the white egrets would be left alive and you must not think that their feathers would really not be worth anything then when we talk of a thing not being worth anything what we really mean is that we cannot sell it for money now what are things that you cannot sell for money I will tell you three there is the sky and the air and the sunlight you cannot sell them but do you think they are not worth anything I think they are worth a good deal then there is a good temper nobody can buy that but yet what a lot it is worth now if the beautiful feathers of the white egrets could not be sold because the world was better and there were no frozen hearted women to buy them yet they would be worth something although it would not be money they would be worth love and pity and sympathy and interest and real admiration for all those things would be given to the beautiful bird with its beautiful feathers and it would be just because of those things that no one would think of killing him his feathers then would be like the smiles on a face you cannot take those out of the face and put them in a hat if you could then someone would soon say to you will you part with a few of your smiles they are fashionable in hats just now I will give you for a nice bright one let me see half a crown but I think it is worth much more where it is in your face though you cannot take it out and get half a crown for it smiles are not bought for money in that way but you must remember that what is not worth money is often worth much better things that is why I wish the feathers of the poor white egrets were not worth even a penny if they were not then if you were to go to the countries where they live you would see those feathers on the birds themselves where they look most beautiful and you could watch the birds with the feathers on them flying through the air or perched in trees or walking about in the water and catching fish in it or building their nests or feeding their young or doing all sorts of other interesting and amusing things and they would not be so rare then in fact they would be quite common so that you would not have to go into such out of the way places yes in such unhealthy places too in order to see them no they would be all about seeing you instead of you're going to see them sometimes even they might come into your garden for why should you not have a garden in another country and walk about on the lawn think how interesting that would be and how pretty would look and all because those beautiful white feathers would not be worth anything but because they are worth a good deal men who would kill every bird in the world for money go out with guns and shoot these poor white egrets whenever and wherever they see them and because of this they are only to be found in swamps and places where you and most other sensible people do not like to go so that now the only people who ever see these beautiful birds are just the servants of the demon who murder them as soon as they see them you and I and others like us who would like to look at them and admire them and watch their ways and learn all about them cannot do so cannot see them at all cannot even imagine them unless in swamps being shot yet once they were quite common so that everyone might look at them now they are getting rarer and rarer so that very soon if we do not do something about it quickly there will be no more of them left in the world how dreadful that is to think of if you were to see a very beautiful picture or statue and then afterwards you were to hear that it had been destroyed you would feel sorry would you not and not only you but all the world would I feel perfectly sure that if Sir Edwin Lancer who as your mother will tell you was a great animal artist had painted a white egret everybody would think it quite shocking if it were to be burnt or torn up you would hear people say and they would be quite right to say so oh it is dreadful it is quite dreadful to think of it can never be replaced there is no such other artist to think of such a masterpiece being destroyed now when all the white egrets and let me tell you they are all masterpieces have been destroyed it will be quite impossible to replace any of them so that that kind of bird or any other kind of bird or animal that has been shot and shot till there is no more of it left will have gone in just the same way that a picture goes when you burn it or tear it to pieces but is there any picture of a bird or animal that is so beautiful or so wonderful as that bird or animal itself and is there any artist so great as the artist who made it who made that bird or animal that picture do you have any life inside it you know who that artist is you know his name or if you do not your mother will tell you I have called him Dame Nature but that is only just a way of talking he has another name greater than that he is a much greater artist than Sir Edwin Lancer or even Raphael or Phidias but I am afraid there are not many people who really know that he is perhaps he is too great to be appreciated well these poor white egrets these masterpieces that are always being destroyed are birds that live mostly in America and Mexico and California and Florida and I think all over South and Central America they live in the swamps and lagoons as they are called in the great forests where trees grow all about in the water such dark gloomy wonderful places and the servants of the little demon whose business it is to kill them have to follow them to those places and live there too they are healthy for them and they often die there but the women with the frozen hearts do not mind that any more than they mind the egrets being shot they want the feathers and when they pay for the feathers they pay for the lives as well for they are honest although their hearts have been frozen perhaps you will wonder how men can live at all in such places as those of course as it is all water they have to live in boats or canoes and as soon as they have found out a pool or creek where the white egrets come to catch fish or some tree where they have built their nests they cover their boats over with reeds or rushes or ferns or the branches of trees so that even though you were to come quite close to them you would not think they were boats at all but only part of the forest that is what the poor white egrets think for the men sit in their covered up boats quite silently without speaking a word and as soon as they come near enough to them fire at them and kill them and now I will tell you another dreadful thing which makes the killing of these poor birds more cruel even than you would have thought it was though I am sure you would have thought it cruel enough I have spoken of their having nests so of course there will often be young ones in those nests who cannot feed themselves but have to be fed by the parent birds what do the young ones do when the parent birds their own fathers and mothers have been shot I will tell you they starve that is what they do and that is what the women with the frozen hearts who wear these feathers know that they do have been told so now often enough is it not terrible for those pure white beautiful feathers not only have the grown birds have been killed but the young ones their children have starved starved slowly and the nest where they were born day after day they had looked out from it to see their father or mother come flying to them with something to eat day after day they had not seen them and when the night came oh they were so hungry before how glad they used to be when they saw the great white wings come floating to them slowly through the air like a silver sun like a broad white silken sail nearer and nearer they came and then there was a cry of greeting and such good appetites for breakfast or dinner their appetites were just as good now indeed better for they were starving but where was father or mother where were the broad white wings the silken sail the great silver sun oh how they strained their eyes and stretched their poor little long necks over the side of the nest to try to see them to see if they were not coming if there was only a speck of white in the distance but they saw nothing for father and mother had both been shot and now they grew so weak with hunger that they could not hold their heads up anymore they laid them down in the nest and their eyes closed and their poor little voices only came in whispers feed us feed us poor then even the whispers ceased the beaks could not be opened and slowly slowly they starved and those are the feathers feathers that have been gotten that way which the poor women whose hearts the little demon has frozen wearing their hats and those hats they go out to concerts and hear songs that are all of love and tenderness and music that seems to have been made by the angels in heaven for some good and just thing to save people from being killed or children from being starved some of them may even speak at such meetings and in those hats those very hats and those hats too they go to church and they kneel down in them and they pray yes, pray oh it is wonderful, wonderful in Africa where the people believe in Westcraft one man will throw a spell upon another man that he hates so that wherever that man goes and whatever he does he always sees his face his enemy's face there it is always before him and at last he gets so tired of seeing it that he dies or even kills himself of course he does not really see the face and his enemy does not really cast a spell upon him because there is no such thing as witchcraft really it is all superstition as they think you know but as the one man thinks he sees the face and the other man thinks he is casting a spell upon him and making him see it it comes to very nearly if not quite the same thing as if it were real especially as the one man does really die ah, if those hats could cast a spell not quite the same one as that but something like it if wherever the women who wore them went whether it was to concerts where they heard beautiful music or to meetings where good things were talked about or to church where they kneeled down and prayed they always saw a picture of a nest with young birds in it starving slowly starving if it was always there always before them that pitiful picture and if the voices came too the screams and then the whispers feed us, feed us then I think they would take off those hats and they would not wear them anymore they need not die or kill themselves they would only have to take off those hats and they will do that now because you and every little child in the world will have asked them to yes they will do it now they will take off those hats those hats of starvation and murder and painful cruelty they will leave off wearing them they will never put them on again those blooms called ospreys that one sees everywhere and streets and in shop windows that concerts that meetings and in churches that bend above fine sentiments that wave over charities and goodnesses and tremble softly and the breath of that prayers are made of they will tear them out of their hats and out of their hair yes and out of their hearts too they will loathe them and when they say next time in church upon their needs give us this day our daily bread they will try not to remember them or only to think that they are unfashionable oh make them unfashionable for you have not yet you have not said promise yet oh then at once, at once break the spell of the demon that spell that is so real and so cruel that spell that kills the soul thaw the poor frozen heart thaw it with your own warm one with your lips, with your soft hands and arms thaw it with tears in your eyes as they look up thaw it with the words that say mother do not kill parents and make children starve mother do not wear ospreys oh mother promise promise so now we have saved the white egrets as well as all the other birds that I have been telling you of and that your mother has promised about but does that save all the beautiful birds in the world oh no for there are ever so many more than I have been able to say anything about in a little book like this more oh a great many more than all the birds of paradise and all the hummingbirds and all the other ones in the other chapters for you know, there are not very many put together and though the hummingbirds and the birds of paradise and the white egrets and the others are now quite safe yet if your mother does not promise about the rest people will go on killing them till there are no more than left in the world think what that would mean why besides hundreds and hundreds of beautiful foreign birds would mean all the king fishers the starbirds for there has been no promise about them and all the chafinces and the bull finches and the gold finches and the green finches and yes and all the little robin red breasts too being shot and shot killed and killed till there were no more of them left either in England or anywhere else for of course when all the beautiful foreign birds are gone then the frozen hearted woman would begin to wear our own little birds here at home in their hats you would hear one lady say to another I wanted to have a red breast tip at this winter but my dear they are so expensive you see hundreds go to one because there's only the breast so I'm afraid I must fall back on a green finch there are less of course you see there's a greater surface and they're not quite so rare but I did so want a red breast and then the other lady would say well I think I should manage it if I were you dear for you know they say there will soon be no more real red breast on the imitation so it's best to get one whilst there's time and you may be sure that it would be managed somehow things like that always are well then but what has to be done do you think your mother would make a promise about all the birds I think she would if you were to ask her but then perhaps she might think it a little hard not to wear any feathers just at first at any rate although flowers and all sorts of other things look ever so much nicer in hats oh but wait are there no feathers that can be worn in hats without it doing any harm at all without any bird being killed to get them why yes of course they are and the very handsomest of them all ostrich feathers ostriches are kept on farms and twice a year there are beautiful white and black feathers are clipped into the market so as they are not killed but kept alive and fed and taken care of and have a very good time of it as I can tell you that they do for I've lived on an ostrich farm I do not see any reason why one should not wear their feathers if one wants to and how beautiful their feathers are I think myself that they are the only feathers that look really nice in a hat at any rate they are the only ones that ever looked nice in a portrait a portrait of a lady in a beautiful broad brimmed hat with beautiful broad soft ostrich feathers curling all around it looks lovely but a portrait of a lady in a stiff little pork pie of this sort of thing with a lot of heads and wings and tails sticking bolt upright and it looks horrid people you know always look like their portraits as long as their portraits are good ones and of course we are not talking about bad portraits so I think that any sensible woman even though her heart were frozen and she were determined to wear feathers would only wear ostrich feathers of course no woman whose heart the wicked little demon had not frozen would ever wear any other kind but there are not going to be frozen hearted women in the world anymore now because their little children will soon have thawed all their hearts and the goddess of pity is just beginning to wake up again so now ask your dear dear mother to make just one more promise just one more which will be better than all the other she has made of course she could not be expected to make it quite at first but now after all that you have told her I think she will just go to her and throw your arms around her neck and whisper mother promise not to wear any feathers except the beautiful ostrich feathers that you look so lovely in as soon as she has promised then all the beautiful birds in the world and that means all the birds for all birds are beautiful will be saved and it is you and the other little children who will have saved them so of course you must keep on saying promise till she does End of Chapter 12 Recording by Elsie Selwyn End of Beautiful Birds by Edmund Celis