 Chapter 5 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 Sellas Chapter 5 The Lesser, Black, Blue and Golden Birds of Paradise. Now, I have told you about two very beautiful birds of paradise, and in this chapter I shall tell you about some others. At least I shall try to tell you what they are like, because not so very much is known about their habits, what they do or how they live. That is because they live in such wild parts of the world, in such deep dense forests and on such high, steep hills. Not many travellers have been into these out-of-the-way places, and those that have gone there, instead of trying to watch them and find out all about them, which would have been so interesting, have shot at them with their guns whenever they have seen them, and have either killed them or driven them away. It is not by killing birds or by driving them away that you can find out much about their habits. It would be much better if these travellers were to take a good pair of glasses and were to sit down in the forests or on the hills and watch the birds through the glasses whenever they saw them. For with a good pair of glasses, one can watch birds even when they do not come very near to one. Then we should know something about them, and the more we know about a bird or any other living creature, the more interesting it becomes for us. One cannot be very interested in something that one knows nothing about, but as one begins to know even a little about it, it begins to get interesting directly. But then why is it that the travellers who go out to these countries take guns with them instead of glasses and shoot the birds, as well as other animals, instead of watching them? That is a question which I cannot answer. All I can tell you is that it is, as I say, and I'm afraid the wicked little demon has something to do with it. But now we must get on, and first we come to the lesser bird of paradise. The lesser bird of paradise is something like the great bird of paradise, only it is not quite so handsome and not nearly as big, which of course is what you would expect from its name. Where the great bird of paradise is brown, the lesser one is brown too, but it is a lighter brown, not such a nice rich coffee-coloured one as the other. And on the breast, this brown colour does not change into a blackish violet or a browny purple, as you know it does in the great bird of paradise. It is brown there just the same. On the back though, the lesser bird of paradise is all yellow, so that here, if you remember, it has the advantage. But then the long plumes on each side under the wings are not so long as in the great bird of paradise, and they have only just a tinge of orange in them, instead of being of the beautiful golden orange colour that his ones are. The tips of them too are white instead of mauvey brown, and the two funny feathers in the tail are much shorter than the great bird of paradise's funny feathers. But although the lesser bird of paradise is not such a beautiful bird as the great bird of paradise is, still it is a very beautiful bird indeed. What bird of paradise is not? And as it is commoner than the other birds of paradise and easier to get, it is the one that is most often killed and put into the hats that the women with the frozen hearts wear, which is why I want you to jump up and throw your arms round your mother's neck and make her promise never, never to wear a hat that has a lesser bird of paradise in it. And now, what would you say to a black bird of paradise? For there is one, yes, and such a splendid bird. Oh, but you will say, be as black, he cannot be so very beautiful, for he cannot be of all sorts of beautiful colours like the other ones. But have you not heard of a black diamond? That is black, but in its blackness all sorts of wonderful colours are lying asleep, and sometimes they wake up and flash out of it as the sun's rays do out of a dark stormy cloud, and then they go back into it again and are lost as the sun's rays are lost when the sun goes in. Yes, they are asleep those colours, and whilst they are asleep, the diamond is really black, but when they wake up and begin to gleam and flash and sparkle and shoot about, then it is not a black diamond anymore, although we may call it so, and there may be a dark deep cavern so dark and so deep that you would be quite afraid to go into it, especially at night. But some gypsies who were not afraid have gone into it and have lighted a fire, and the flames leap up and glimmer through the smoke and then sink for a moment and shoot up again and fall on the sides and roof of the cavern and make a deep glow in its mouth and flicker on the leaves of the trees outside and send out long tongues of flame that make a red light in the air and lick the darkness of everything that they touch. That cavern was dark and black before the fire was lighted in it, and when the fire goes out it will be dark and black again, but it is not dark and black just now whilst the red fire is burning. Or it may be a dark night, very dark and stormy, so dark that it is difficult for people who are out in it to find their way, whilst people who only look out of the window say that it is a pitch dark night. But now the rain is beginning to fall and it comes down faster and faster and there is a muttering in the dull sky and, all at once, a flash of lightning leaps out of the darkness, cutting it as though with a red jagged knife. And for an instant it is day and you see the leaves on the trees and the raindrops falling through the air and the fields with haystacks standing in them or rivers winding through them and the distant hills and the line where the earth meets the heavens. Then, all in a moment, almost before you can say, oh, and quite before the great clap of thunder that follows the lightning flash, it is night, deep, dark, black night again. The night in which there is a storm like that is a dark night, but it is not dark when the lightning is leaping and flashing. It is the same with this black bird of paradise. At first, when you look at him, all his plumage is of a deep, dark, velvety black, a lovely black, a beautiful, smooth, glossy black, a black that seems almost a gleam and a sparkle as if it were jewellery. Black velvet jewellery, you may call it, very handsome, very beautiful indeed. Still, it is black, but all at once all the colours that have lain asleep in it, blues and greens and bluey greens and greeny blues and purples and indigos and wonderful bronzy reflections. Wake up together and flash out of it like the sparkles out of the diamonds, like the tongues of fire out of the black cavern, like the lightning out of the dark night. There they all are, flashing and leaping about, meeting and mingling, then shooting apart, playing little games with each other till all at once they fall asleep again. And there is only the smooth, glossy black, the deep, jetty black, the shining, gleaming, satiny velvety black, the black velvet, black satin jewellery. That is what a black bird of paradise is like, like a black diamond, like a cavern with a firelighted in it, like a dark night with flashes of lightning. But now I will tell you a little more about his appearance. For this that I have told you is only just to give you an idea of how that wonderful material from which Dame Nature, with her scissors, cuts out all her children, for all things that are alive are the children of Dame Nature, can be black and yet have all sorts of colours in it at the same time. First you must know, so as not to make any mistake, that this black bird of paradise has another name. Indeed, he has two other names, but one of them is in Latin, so we won't bother about that. There are some birds that have no English names, and when we come to them we will have to call them by their Latin ones. But as long as a bird has an English name, we will never trouble our heads about what its Latin name may be, not we any more than the bird itself does, and no bird that has an English name ever thinks about what its name is in Latin. In fact, I really do not believe that it knows. An English name is enough for any bird, if only it is so fortunate as to have one. Now this bird is so fortunate as to have two English names. The black bird of paradise that you know about, which is what the English people who live in its own country call it, and the superb bird of paradise, which is what naturalists at home in England call it, the superb bird of paradise. Just fancy having a name like that. Supposing a gentleman, some friend of your father and mother, who calls sometimes at the house, were to be called the superb Mr Jones, or the superb Mr Robinson. Only he would have to be very much more handsome than he is at all likely to be before he would deserve a name like that. Well, the two most wonderful things about the superb, or black bird of paradise, after his marvellous black plumage that has all sorts of colours lying asleep in it, are two wonderful ornaments that he has, one on his head and one on his breast. The one on his head is the most wonderful. It is a sort of crest, at least I think that is the best name for it. Some people I know call it a shield, but then that is what they call the other wonderful thing on the breast too. So, if they call that a shield, I think they should call this a helmet, for it is a helmet and not a shield that soldiers wear on the head. I shall call it a crest, but it is one of the most extraordinary crests that any bird ever had. It is like a pair of black velvet lappets, so long that they go all down the back and reach half an inch beyond the tips of the wings. But at the back of the head, where this crest begins, the two lappets meet and they are joined together for a little way before they begin to go apart. I tell you what will give you an idea of the shape of this crest. Have you ever seen a pair of trousers that have been washed and are hanging out on a clothesline to dry with the legs very wide apart, so wide they look as if they had been stretched? I don't know if they really have. Of course you have seen such a thing. Well, that will give you an idea. Mind, that is all I can say of what this wonderful crest that is worn by the black bird of paradise is like. The legs of the trousers are the two lappets from where they are divided from each other and farther up they join and become all one just as the legs of a pair of trousers do. Only, of course, I need hardly tell you that a crest of beautiful black velvety feathers glossed with bronze and purple has a far more elegant appearance than a pair of trousers hanging out to dry, though it may have just a little the same shape. Now, I think you will agree with me that this crest is a wonderful thing, even when it is only lying down along the neck and the body of the bird. But what would you say when you saw the black bird of paradise lifted right up above its head? Which is what he does. You may be sure when he wants to show off before the hen bird who has no crest on her head nor shield on her breast and whose black feathers, I'm afraid, are not nearly so glossy and velvety and have no colours lying asleep in them and ready to wake up all of a sudden. Ah, you would think the black bird of paradise a wonderful, wonderful bird if you were to see him bowing politely to his hen and lifting up his wonderful, wonderful crest to her. But I told you that this bird had a shield too, and when he lifts up his crest over his head, he shoots out his shield in front of his breast at the same time, and this shield is something of the same shape as the crest or helmet, only smaller and always of a lovely bluey green colour with a glossy sheen upon it that is just like that upon satin. Yes, always, for the colours that go to sleep in the other parts of the black bird of paradise's plumage, keep wide awake in the shield on its breast, or if you ever do catch them napping, it is only just for a single instant, and then out they flash again, wider awake than ever. So now, if you were to say, as I'm sure you would say, that the black bird of paradise was a wonderful, wonderful bird, even if you were to see him with only his crest lifted up, what would you say if you were to see him with his crest lifted up and his shield shot out at the same time? Why? I think that then you could not say less than that he was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful bird, three wonderfuls instead of only two, and indeed you would be right. Yes, he is a wonder, is the black bird of paradise, though I must tell you that he has not any of those long, silky feathers that hang down like cascades and shoot up like fountains from the sides of those other birds of paradise I have been telling you about, and he has no long, funny feathers in his tail either. You see, he cannot have everything, and his crest and shield are instead of those. They are not quite so beautiful perhaps, but I think they are still more wonderful. Even when his crest, his helmet, is laid down and his shield is not stuck out, the black bird of paradise is a wonder. But when he raises the one up and shoots the other out both at the same time and says to the hen, look at me. And all the colours that have been asleep in the helmet or awake in the shield, gleam and flash and sparkle together are then he is a wonder of wonders. Then do you think he is a bird that ought to be killed and killed and killed only to have those beautiful bronzy black crests and satiny green gleaming shields of his setting hats where they soon get dull and dusty and where he can never raise them up or shoot them out or pay proper attention to them? Because he is dead, dead, dead? Is he to be killed and killed till he is gone forever and there is not one more beautiful black bird of paradise in the whole world? Oh no, no, no. It ought not to be so. It must not, it shall not, because you will prevent it. Yes, you. You will turn to your mother now, this minute if she is there, if she is reading this to you, or if not, you will run to her. Oh, so quickly, so quickly. And ask her, beg her. Keep on asking and asking, begging and begging her to promise till she has promised never, never to buy a hat that has a beautiful black bird of paradise in it. Now, as I have said that the black bird of paradise is such a very wonderful bird, as I have even called him a wonder of wonders, perhaps you will think that there is no other bird of paradise quite so wonderful as he is. Well, I do not wonder at your thinking so, and do you know whilst I was describing him to you and telling you how wonderful he was, I thought so too. But I have forgotten the blue bird of paradise. The blue bird of paradise is quite as wonderful as the black one. Perhaps, but mind I only say perhaps, he is even a little more wonderful. To begin with, blue is a very uncommon colour for a bird of paradise to be. None of the birds of paradise that I have told you about have feathers that are really blue. There are blue lights I know in some of their feathers, especially on the head, but still they are not quite blue. You could hardly call them blue feathers, for there is a green light or a purple light, as well as a blue light in them, which makes them bluey green or greeny purple, or at any rate green or purple and blue, not just blue by itself. And then, as you know, sometimes all those lights go to sleep, and then the feathers are black. I do not think there is any bird of paradise except the blue bird of paradise, whose feathers are really and truly blue, and I'm quite sure that there is no other one, at least that we know of, which has so much blue about it, that you would think of it as a blue bird, or that has blue feather fountains, those wonderful long silky pooms that grow out of each side under the wings. That is what is most wonderful in the blue bird of paradise. There is no other bird of paradise that can sit under a blue fountain or look out of a blue sunset. But the pooms of the blue bird of paradise are not so long as those of the great or the lesser bird of paradise, and when he spreads them out, they go more on each side of him than up over his head, and for this reason, I think, he looks more as if he was looking out of a sunset than sitting under a fountain. You have seen a beautiful sunset often. There will be blue in it somewhere, cool, lovely lakes or bays, or long stretching inlets of the loveliest, purest, most delicate blue. But the clouds that float in those bays and lakes like islands, or that chuck them in and make their shores like great burning continents are not blue, but rosy red or fiery crimson or molten gold or golden crimson flame. That, at least, is what the brightest ones are like, those that are gathered nearest round the sun. Now, if they could keep all their brightness and glowingness and be blue instead of rose or crimson or gold, then it would be a blue sunset, and that is what the sunset is like, that the blue bird of paradise looks out of when he spreads out his pooms. Just as the sunset that the red bird of paradise looks out of when he spreads out his pooms is like a red sunset, only of feathers, of course. One is a blue feather sunset, and the other a red feather sunset. And how soft those feathers are, those wonderful blue sunset feathers of the wonderful blue bird of paradise. Oh, I cannot tell you how softly they droop down over his breast, or how softly, how very softly each feather touches the other one upon it. How softly, I wonder, but I know you will want me to say, as softly as a snowflake falls upon snow, oh, more softly than that. As softly as two gossamas are blown together in the air, still more softly even. As softly then as your mother kisses you when you are asleep, and she does not wish to wake you. Yes, I think it is as softly, or almost as softly as that. Those are two of the very softest kisses, when your mother kisses you when you are asleep, so as not to wake you. And when the soft blue feathers of the plumes on each side of a blue bird of paradise meet and kiss each other on its breast. Now that is all I'm going to tell you about the front part of the blue bird of paradise. For those wonderful blue feathers that grow on each side become the front part of him when he spreads them out. You see, they open out like two fans with the handles turned towards each other and meet together on the breast and above the head so as to make one large fan or screen. Of course there is something behind this screen and through it peeps the head of the bird, which is very pretty too. But you don't look at his head, you don't seem to see it. All you see or look at are those beautiful, beautiful plumes, that lovely screen, that wonderful soft blue feather sunset. As for the back part of this wonderful blue bird of paradise, well that is blue too, most of it. A handsome blue, a lovely blue, a gleaming, shiny, glossy, satiny blue that looks darker when you see it from one side and lighter when you see it from another. And which gleams and glints and is very resplendent, which is a word your mother will explain to you, however you look at it. Oh a glorious blue, a magnificent blue, but not such a blue as the blue of those soft lovely feathers that spread out on each side and curl over and meet and kiss each other so softly on the breast. And the head and neck of the blue bird of paradise, for sometimes he puts them behind the screen and then they are the back part of him. Are of a soft velvet brown that, as you look at it, becomes a soft velvet, carrot, magenta colour, which your mother knows all about and will explain to you. And in his tale there are two long funny feathers that hang down from the bow he is sitting on and now you must try to imagine him. When you have imagined him or before you have, if you are not able to, you must make your mother promise, now what? You know, of course, you must make her promise never to wear a hat with a blue bird of paradise's feathers in it. Now we come to the golden or six-shafted bird of paradise who lives just in one part of New Guinea, that long part at the north that goes out into the sea and which we call a peninsula. You have only to look at the map and you will see it. Now I think of it, the superb or blackbird of paradise, or shall we say the superb blackbird of paradise, lives there too. So I dare say they sometimes see each other. Perhaps they call on each other for, you see, they are both of them distinguished. One is superb and the other golden. And when two people are like that, they do not mind calling upon one another. You see, neither of them can be hurt by it then. A superb person may call upon even a golden person and yet feel quite well after it and it will not do a golden person any harm at all to call upon a superb person. So if birds are like people, I feel sure that sometimes the golden and the superb bird of paradise call upon each other. Now, you will want to know why this bird of paradise is called both the golden and the six-shafted bird of paradise. Well, he is called the golden bird of paradise because he has lovely golden feathers on his throat and breast. And he is called the six-shafted bird of paradise because six little arrows, for that is what they look like, seem to have been shot into his head free on each side. Arrows, you know, are sometimes called shafts. These little shafts or arrows are six inches long, almost as long as the bird itself and bend right back over his body as far as to the tail. Of course, each of them is really a feather, an arrow that is all feather, but it is a funny feather with only the quill which is very thin and slender till quite the end. Weather is just a little oval piece of the soft web, a part that looks really like a feather, left upon it. That is what makes them look like arrows. But is it not curious that the funny feathers of this bird of paradise are in his head instead of in his tail? I think it must be because Dame Nature wanted to make him a little different. Of course, you will see at once that six feathers like that, to say nothing of his wonderful golden breast, make the six-shafted or golden bird of paradise quite as remarkable as the black or the blue or any of the other birds of paradise. Weather it makes him more remarkable, that I really can't say. You must make up your mind about that. The fact is, all the birds of paradise are remarkable. I am sure if they were all together in one place and you were to say out loud that any one of them was the most remarkable, all the other ones would be very much offended. But now, besides his six little shafts or arrows and the beautiful golden feathers on his throat and breast, they are very large, I must tell you, those feathers, and sometimes they look green and blue as well as golden. This bird of paradise has two immense tufts of beautiful, soft, silky feathers on each side of the breast. So large each tuft is that when he lifts them both up, as of course he can do, they almost hide him all together. Then on the back of his head he has a band of feathers, so wonderfully bright that they do not seem to be feathers at all. They look more like jewels. Yes, jewels. It is as if some magician had taken the sheen and shining light out of the emerald and topaz and put them on that bird's head and told them to stay there. Then on his forehead, just above the beak, as if all this were not enough, there is a patch, quite a large patch of pure white feathers that shine like satin. Really, I think you might almost say that this bird of paradise was the most wonderful of all the birds of paradise. But take care, do not say it out loud, or you will offend all the others. Only I forgot, they are not here. Well then, you may say it out loud, if you really think so. I do wish I could have got this bird's picture, but as he would not give it to me, you must look at the picture of the golden winged bird of paradise instead. He is a very handsome bird too, very much brighter than he looks. Well, this makes the six bird of paradise which I have been able to tell you something about, I mean about their appearance, for very little else is known about them. But, do you know, there are some 40 or 50 different kinds, and of course, if I were to describe them all, or anything like all, which however I should not be able to do, this little book would become quite a big book and there would be no room in it for any other kinds of beautiful birds. So, I won't describe any more birds of paradise, but I will just say something before getting on to the other beautiful birds about birds of paradise and beautiful birds in general. That means about most birds of paradise and most other beautiful birds. When we talk about things in general or people in general, we mean most things or most people, but that must be in another chapter, but this one has been quite long enough and so we must end it. Oh, but wait a minute, really I was quite forgetting. First, you must get your mother to promise never to buy a hat in which there are any feathers belonging to the golden or six-shafted bird of paradise. Yes, and never to wear it either, even if she did not buy it, but had it given to her. Of course, your father might give your mother a hat, but if he were to give her one of that sort, he would have to take it back to the shop and change it for another. End of chapter 5 This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Beautiful Birds by Edmund Sellas. Chapter 6 About all birds of paradise and some explanations As I have told you, there are some forty or fifty different kinds of birds of paradise, and they are all of them as beautiful or nearly as beautiful as those that I have described, each one in its own special way. Of course you must know yourself or your mother will tell you that all this wonderful beauty has not been given to these birds for nothing, and I have told you that the male birds of paradise who alone have it show it off to the poor hen birds whose plumage is quite sober in comparison, though you must not think that they are not pretty birds too because they are pretty, though in a quieter style. So they are not really poor hen birds, that is only just a way of speaking. They are happy enough, you may be sure, for they have their husbands fine clothes to look at. But what is so interesting is that each of these different kinds of birds of paradise has some different way of arranging and showing off his fine clothes. For of course a bird's feathers are his clothes just as much as our coats and dresses are ours. And besides that each one of them puts himself into some peculiar attitude which he thinks is the best one to let his plumage be seen as he would like it to be. We may be quite sure of this because it is what all birds do that have beautiful plumage and many of them have regular places that they come to to run or jump about in just as soldiers come into a park or common to march about in it and show off their nice pretty uniforms. There will always be a great many hen birds round these places to look at the beautiful males and there are always a great many ladies round the park or common to look at the beautiful soldiers. Now would it not be interesting if we knew what all these different birds of paradise did and how they arranged their plumage and what attitudes they went into and whether they ran or jumped or flew or did all three and all the rest of it. If only there was somebody who knew all that I think he could write a very interesting book. And if only some would go out into those countries with a pair of glasses or even a pair of eyes instead of with a gun and whenever he saw a bird of paradise would just look at it through the glasses or with his own eyes if it was near enough instead of shooting it. I think he might write an interesting book. I am sure I should find it interesting and I think you would too. Depend upon it if anyone could tell people what a bird of paradise did he would interest them very much more than by telling them how he shot it. That is not at all interesting how he shot it. Do you think it would be so very interesting for people to know how you broke a very handsome ornament in your mother's drawing room? Why I don't think it would interest even your mother much but she would be very sorry you broke it and that it is just how I feel and I think some other people do too when a person tells me how he shot a bird of paradise. Things of that kind interest the little demon. If they interest anyone else I am afraid it is only because of that little demon because of his wicked powers and his having sent the goddess of pity to sleep. But I am sorry to say that there is hardly anybody who knows anything about all these birds of paradise, anything about their habits and how they live and how they dance and the way they arrange their wonderful plumage so as to make it look as beautiful as possible. Perhaps there are a few people who know just a little, a very little, about some of the more common kinds but as for all the rest if anyone knows anything about them it must be those black or yellow people that we call savages who live in the same countries that they live in. That is because when a traveller from Europe goes out to those countries he always takes a gun not glasses or if he does take a pair of glasses he does not use them or his eyes either in the right way and when he sees one of these rare birds of paradise he shoots it or else frightens it away as I told you. Then when he comes back he writes his book and tells you how he shot it or tried to shoot it and then he says unfortunately nothing whatever is known of the habits of this species it is not very wonderful that he knows nothing of them is it and yet this traveller with his gun almost always calls himself a naturalist. Now a real naturalist is a person who loves nature but is not that a funny way to love her to shoot her children. Depend upon it that one of those little bottles that the demon keeps his powders in is labelled natural history or love of nature. You know that his little bottles have generally a false label on them so I am afraid I cannot tell you much about what the birds of paradise do or how they show off their beautiful feathers. Indeed it is very much the same with most other beautiful birds and for the very same reason that I have been telling you because people will shoot instead of looking and watching. Just a little that we know about the great bird of paradise, how he is a special tree that he comes to, to have those dances that the natives called Saka Letlus and how he flies about with his plumes waving or sits underneath them as if he were in the spray of a falling fountain that I have told you. But besides this I can only tell you just a very little about a bird of paradise that I have not said anything about because you know there are so many of them. The little I can tell you is this. Two gentlemen, one of them a Mr Chalmers and the other a Mr Wyatt, were once travelling in the part of the New Guinea where the bird of paradise lives and one morning when they were up early they saw four of the cock birds and two of the hens in a tree close by them. This is one of these gentlemen says about them, if there is any word too long for you or that you don't understand you must ask your mother to explain it. The two hens were sitting quietly on a branch and the four cocks dressed in their very best, their roughs of green and yellow standing out giving them a handsome appearance about their head and neck. Yes I feel sure of that. Their long flowing plumes so arranged that every feather seemed combed out and the long wires, he means the funny feathers, stretched well out behind were dancing in a circle round them. Just fancy, it was an interesting sight, I should think so. First one and then another would advance a little nearer to a hen and she, coquette-like, you will have to ask your mother what that means, would retire a little pretending not to care for any advances. A shot was fired contrary to Alc's thrust wish. There was a strange commotion and two of the cocks flew away. You see what shooting does, but the others and the hens remained. Soon the two returned and again the dance began and continued long. As we had strictly forbidden any more shooting all fear was gone and so after arrest the males came a little nearer to the dark brown hens quarrelling ensued and in the end all six birds flew away. Fancy seeing all that, I think it is wonderful that any of the birds stayed after the shot had been fired and if another one had been, no doubt they would have all gone. Those travellers you see were a little better than most travellers are. They did not kill the birds, perhaps they were not naturalists, and the consequence is they have had something interesting to tell us about them. Still I think if I had been there I should have had a little more to say and instead of just saying that the cock birds were dancing I should have described how they were dancing and what sort of attitudes they put themselves into and I think I would have waited at that place and gone to those trees again very early next morning all by myself to see if those birds came back to dance there. Still what these travellers do tell us is very interesting, very much more interesting than if they had only written here we shot or here we obtained another specimen of Paradisia something else here which of course would be the Latin name. Naturalists like to tell us the Latin name of the animals they shoot. If they only had an English name I don't think they would care nearly so much to shoot them. How sorry we ought to be that animals have Latin names. But now how is it that it is only the cock bird the male of all these birds of paradise who is so beautiful whilst the poor hen the female bird is quite plain in comparison. Well I must tell you first that this is not only the case with birds of paradise but that it is just the same with other birds as well. In most if not all of the beautiful birds I am going to tell you about it is the male bird that is so very beautiful so that perhaps you will begin to think that this is the case with all beautiful birds and that there is no hen bird that has very splendid or brilliant plumage. But this is not so at all. You would make a great mistake if you were to think that. In most of the parrots those brightly coloured birds that you know so well the male and female are alike and if you were to see a kingfisher the star bird that I told you about in the first chapter gleaming and glancing up a river you would not know whether it was the one or the other. The feathers of the female scarlet flamingo are almost if not quite as scarlet as those of the male. The cock robin's breast is not more red than the breast of the hen robin at least you would find it difficult to tell the difference. Male and female pigeons and some of them are very splendid are as bright as each other and so it is with a very great number of other birds. Now does not this seem funny that some male birds should be so much handsomer than their wives while some hen birds should be just as handsomer as their husbands? Is there any way of explaining this or rather do we know how to explain it? For there is a way of explaining everything a right way I mean of course. The difficult thing is to find it out. Well there are some clever people who have been thinking about this funny thing and they try to explain it in this way. Of course when the male birds are paradise and it is the same with other birds show off their fine plumage to the hen birds it is because they want to marry them which is just the same as with people. For you know when a gentleman wishes to marry a lady he dresses as nicely as he can and sometimes he goes into attitudes as well. Now the hen birds of paradise so these clever people say always choose for their husbands the birds that have the finest feathers and the other ones whose feathers are not so fine have to look about for another wife. Of course after the birds of paradise have married they make a nest and very soon there are eggs in it and then the eggs are chipped and the little birds of paradise come out of them. Some of these little birds of paradise will do males and some females and the male ones will grow up with feathers like the cock birds and the females with feathers like the hen. Just as with us the boys sometimes grow up like the father and the girls sometimes grow up like the mother only with birds of paradise it is always so. But now amongst these young birds of paradise though all will be beautiful some will be more beautiful than the others more beautiful even than their father perhaps and you may be sure that those will be the ones who will find it most easy to marry and who's will have the greater number of children some of those children would be more beautiful than their fathers and then they will marry and have children that are still more beautiful than themselves. And so it will always be going on the young male birds of paradise will always have feathers like their fathers and gradually they will get more and more beautiful because their wives will always choose them for their beauty. But the young female birds of paradise will always be like their mothers and will not become more beautiful than they are because hen birds of paradise are not chosen for their beauty but only for their good qualities. Now if this is true it shows how sensible the birds of paradise must be for all sensible persons would choose their wives for their good qualities and not just for their beauty. The worst of it is that there are so many persons who are not quite sensible still even with us there are a good many wives who must I think had been chosen like the hen birds of paradise for their good qualities which of course is what they ought to be chosen for. That is how some people explain why the male birds of paradise and the other beautiful male birds are so much more beautiful than the females. They say that they have gradually got more and more beautiful whilst the hens have remained plain and that once upon a time there was not so very much difference between them. And if you ask them why the males and females of other birds are both as beautiful as each other they will tell you that the children of those birds were always like the father so that as the father birds became beautiful for they were chosen in the same way. All the little daughter birds became beautiful too as well as the little sons but I'm afraid the people who explain it all in this way must have forgotten how the birds of paradise at any rate used once to live in paradise where of course they were all as beautiful as each other And though their plumage got spoilt when they came out of it beautiful though it seems to us in the way I told you yet it does not seem funny that the hens should have had its spoilt so much more than the cock birds. But you know it was spoiled by the glory which streamed out of the gates of paradise and which was so bright and burning that it burnt off all the most beautiful parts of it and scorched and singed the rest. Now of course the nearer any bird was to the gate of paradise when it opened the worst he would have got scorched and so if the cocks flew faster than the hens and I'm sure they did they would have got soonest away and the hens would have suffered most. That explanation seems much more simple but you see these clever people do not believe about birds of paradise having once lived in paradise. They have their own explanation of it all which I have just told you and they like to believe in that. Then which of the two are you to believe in? Well I think the simpler one which is prettier as well would be the best for you to believe in now. But later on when you are a clever person you can try the other. Now you know you are only a little child and something that is simple and pretty is the right thing for a little child. But a clever person wants a different kind of explanation to that. He wants a clever one and as soon as you feel that you have become a clever person there will be a clever explanation already for you. But now whilst you are still a child I can give you another explanation of why the males and females of some birds are as beautiful as each other whilst the males of some other ones are ever so much the most beautiful. This other explanation will do in case the one about the cock birds of paradise flying faster than the hens is not the right one. For of course we cannot be quite sure that they flew faster. I did say I was sure but that was just a little mistake of mine. One is not really sure of a thing until one knows it and I don't quite know that it happens like that however much I may think it did. Besides, this new explanation that I am going to give you will do for all other birds as well as for the birds of paradise and of course the more anything explains the better explanation it is. So now I will give it you and if you like it better than the other you can take it instead and if you only like it as well then you will have two nice explanations instead of only one. Here it is. In the old days a long long time ago the males and females of all the birds were as beautiful as each other and they were all in love with each other. Only the question was which of them was the most in love and as to that they often had disputes. We love you better than you love us said the male birds to the females. You love us only for our beauty. You do not love us for ourselves as we love you. If you think so said the female birds, the beautiful hens, give us your beauty and you shall find that we love you just as well without it. But the male birds who were quite content really to be loved for their beauty and who did not wish to part with it made haste to change the conversation. But you love us for our beauty said the hen birds, for they soon got round again to the same subject. It is not for ourselves that you love us but only because we are beautiful. If that is your idea said the male birds, bestow your beauty upon us and you shall soon be undeceived. Then the female birds who only wished to be loved for themselves and not for what they looked like gave all their beauty to their beautiful husbands and remained without any. So now of course the male birds were twice as beautiful as they had been before whilst the poor hens were not beautiful at all and would have been quite ugly if they had not been birds. For a bird cannot be ugly and now it was found that whilst some of the male birds had loved their wives so much that they went on loving them still in spite of the change in their appearance. Others and I am afraid they were the greater number left off loving them as soon as they had left off being beautiful and were not able to love them again although they tried ever so hard. You see they had only loved them for their beauty not for themselves so as soon as there was no more beauty there was no more love. So those male birds who had loved for love only and not because their wives were beautiful kept this beauty and added it to their own. Their wives did not want it back for love was enough for them but the ones who had loved their wives only because of their beauty had to give it back for otherwise they would not have been able to go on loving them and that would have been very awkward indeed. That is why in some birds the males and females are as beautiful as each other whilst in others the males are twice as beautiful as the females. As I told you this is an explanation which does not well for any other bird as it does for the birds of paradise and if you like it you can believe in it till you have grown up from a simple little child into a complicated clever person. So now there are six birds of paradise that your mother has promised not to wear in her hats not in any hat that she buys or has been given to her whether it has the whole skin of one in it or only just a few feathers or even one. She will not buy such a hat and she will not go into a shop to ask the price of it. She will have nothing to do with it whatever because she has promised. But now do you not see that as your dear mother has only promised about six kinds of birds of paradise and as there are some forty or fifty kinds in the world she might easily buy a hat that had some kind of bird of paradise in it without it being any of these six. How much better it would be then if you, your dear, dear mother, were to promise never to wear a hat that had any kind of bird of paradise in it and I'm sure she will now that you have explained to her about the wicked little demon and how much more beautiful these birds of paradise are when they are alive and how happy they are too and how their wives want them to look at and how there will be no more of them left soon. People keep on killing them just to put it into hats. Just talk to her about it a little and then throw your arms round her neck and say, oh mother do promise never to wear a hat like that that has the feathers of any bird of paradise in it. There and now she has promised. Well you see how easy it is. End of chapter six. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Beautiful Birds by Edmund Sellas. Chapter seven about hummingbirds and some more explanations. Perhaps when I was telling you about the birds of paradise and how very, very beautiful they are, you thought they were the most beautiful birds in the whole world. They are nearly but not quite. There are the hummingbirds. They are even more beautiful. At least they are more like jewels and the Indians who live in the countries where they are found call them living sunbeams. By Western Indians living sunbeams named. You can remember it by that line, which is from a poem by Mrs. Hemons, a clever lady whom your mother will tell you of doubt. For the Indians, you know, live in America, that great country, so large that we call it the New World, which Columbus discovered. They do not live in India, as you might think, at least when we talk of the Indians. He is the ones that live in America and not India, that would mean. The ones that live in India we call Hindus. It seems funny, but the reason of it is that when Columbus discovered America he thought it was India, for it was India he had been trying to find, and he thought he had found it. But it was America, not India, and it is only in America that the beautiful hummingbirds live. Birds that are so beautiful as they are want a world to themselves to live in. Now the birds that we have been talking about, the birds of paradise, are not such very small birds. The largest of them is nearly as large as a crow, and even the very smallest is not so much smaller than a thrush or a starling. But the largest hummingbird is not so large as a sparrow or a chafffinch, and the smaller ones are the very smallest birds in the whole world. Some of them being not so very much larger than a large humble bee, which is quite wonderful to think of. Then they are wonderful fliers. The birds of paradise fly very well, quite well enough, but still there is nothing extraordinary in the way they fly. But the little hummingbirds start about quite like lightning and move their wings so fast that when you look at them they do not seem to be wings at all, but only two little hazy patches in the air with a bright chill between them, which is the gleaming breast of the hummingbird. All the time their wings are moving so quickly they make a humming sound just as a top does when it is spinning very fast, which is why we call them hummingbirds, just as we call tops that hum very much humming tops. We have named the hummingbirds from the sound they make when they fly and the Indians from their bright radiance and the speed at which they dart about. It is from flower to flower that they dart, and whilst you are looking at one sunbeam that is dancing about one flower, all at once there is a ray of light through the air and another sunbeam is dancing about another flower. That is what it looks like, only really it is the same sunbeam that has flown from one flower to another. Sometimes when you are walking in the garden in England and looking at the geraniums in your flower beds, you will see a little brown moth hovering over one of them and putting a long slender thread-like thing that we call a probuscus, though we call an elephant's trunk a probuscus too, right down into the centre of the flower. Wings move so fast that you can hardly see them and in a second or two he will dart away too, so quickly that you only know he is gone and then all of a sudden you will see him again hovering over another geranium and probing it with his wonderful long thin probuscus. There's a tube that probuscus and throw it, the moth is sucking up the nectar of the flower, which is what it lives on. That moth is the hummingbird, hawk moth, and if you have seen it you have seen what it looks more like a hummingbird than anything else in England. It hovers over or under or in front of the flower as the hummingbirds do. It keeps moving its wings in the same rapid way as they move theirs and making the same humming noise with them, and it puts a long slender little brown thing that looks something like a beak of a hummingbird right down into the flower and sucks up the nectar. That is in it, which is just what a hummingbird does. So if the hummingbird moth were bright and gleaming as hummingbirds' sunbeams are, it would seem to be a hummingbird and not a moth at all, but you must not think that it really would be one. Oh no, it never could be because it is an insect and an insect is a very different thing to a bird. The hummingbird moth and the hummingbird look like each other because they live in the same way and do the same things. They both fly, so they both have wings, and they both sip nectar, so they both have a long thing to stick into flowers and suck it up with, so they look like each other, but they are not a bit the same. A petticoat, you know, looks like a little upper skirt, for they both have to be worn round the waist, which makes them the same kind of shape, and when the skirt is part of a white dress, then they are of the same colour. But think how different they really are. Why? One is a petticoat and the other is an upper skirt, so you must always remember that, though two animals look the same, they may really be very different. Now, although the hummingbirds or living sunbeams are all of the small birds, yet they are not all the same size, and some are quite big compared to others, just as a peacock butterfly is quite big compared to a tiny blue one, whilst even the tiny little blue one may be big compared to some very small moths. Then again, their beaks are of all kinds of different shapes and lengths. Some are quite straight whilst others are bent like a saver, or even a sickle, and one hummingbird has his so very much bent indeed that it looks like half of a black ring, or bracelet, or something else that is quite round. As for lengths, some are shorter than a quite short pin whilst others are a longer than a very long, darning needle. Racket-tailed hummingbird. Of course, there is a reason for the beaks of hummingbirds being so different, and the reason is that they have to go into different flowers and must fit into them as a finger fits into a finger stall or a periwinkle into its shell. If the part of the flower that holds the nectar is straight, then the beak of the hummingbird that feeds on the nectar of that flower must be straight too, but if it is curved, then of course the beak must be curved, or else how could it be pushed into it? And if the nectarie of any flower, for that is what the place that the nectar is in is called, were shaped like a corkscrew, then the beak of the hummingbird that sucked out the nectar from that flower would have to be shaped like a corkscrew too. But there are no flowers shaped like that, and so there are no hummingbirds with the corkscrew beaks, like the tail of a periwinkle. But there is a flower that has its nectarie, or honey-chew, bent round into almost a half circle, and it is just that one hummingbird that has its beak bent in the same way that sits the nectar from that flower. No other one is able to do it, and there is no other flower that the hummingbird can sip the nectar from. And then there are more than 400 different kinds of hummingbirds, and the beak of every one of them must fit into some flower or another, and often into a great many more than one. O, then, what a lot of different kinds of flowers there must be, for all these beaks to fit into are, there are indeed, for it is the greatest forests or plains of America, the largest in the whole world, or on the slopes of the great mountain ranges there, the highest in the world except the Himalayas, that the hummingbirds live, and everywhere there are wonderful trees and wonderful flowers. As for the trees, I have told you that some of them are like in the forests of the Malay Acapulago and the great forests of Brazil. I think they are still larger and more wonderful. And as for the flowers that grow in the wonderful forests or on the great plains or the slopes and sides of those great high mountains, how could I ever give you an idea of what they are like or how should I know where to begin when there are so many? For there are some that are like great scarlet trumpets on the outside of their petals, but when you look inside them they are like the open mouths of the fierce dragons shooting out a lot of fiery orange tongues, all forked and cloven ever so many times over, each tongue looking as if it were the tongues of twenty little hissing snakes all tied together in a bundle and ready to dart at you. And then there are some that are in bunches, and each bunch looks as if a lot of oxen had put their heads against each other and begun to grow smaller and smaller and smaller till their horns were no longer than honeysuckles, and then they had disappeared altogether except their horns which had turned pink and stayed there. Bunches of little pink oxhorns are what those flowers look like. Then there are flowers that look as if they had almost changed into very beautiful butterflies, and others that seem to be very beautiful butterflies just changing into flowers. There are flowers that are all the colours that there are, and others that have tried all the colours that there are, and then found out new ones to be of. And there are some too that are only white, but so lovely that all the flowers of the colours that there are gaze at them and envy them. Some are so soft and delicate, although you see them, you only seem to be dreaming of them. They make you think of heaven, and it is as if angels were kissing you. Others are like golden stars with a stem that is like a long, long, very long piece of red string that goes tying itself round and round a great many trees and climbing up and up them, and all the way up there are bright green leaves and the beautiful golden stars. Other strings are golden or green, and have a pink or croons and stars upon them, and some of these hang down like glowing lamps from a soft cool emerald ceiling. Some flowers are like little bunches of red counters that you play games with, and there is one that is like a wonderful scarlet shining leaf with a thick little tail at the tip of it, twisted round in a coil. This tail is orange with cream white spots upon it, but just as at its own tip it's scarlet again, like the rest of the leaf. Such a wonderful looking flower. There are creeping crimson nasturatiams that make the air blush in spots, azaleas with scarlet that is swooned into pink, and pink that has blushed into scarlet, and calceolarias that look like yellow flower bubbles that fairies had blown into the air, and that have come down softly upon delicate little stalks and stayed there without bursting. Not all of these wonderful flowers have ascent, for scented flowers are commoner here in England than are far off tropical countries, but a few of them have, and their scent is so exquisite that you would think it was sent from heaven. Some of the flowers have leaves that are even more beautiful than themselves, and sometimes it is these leaves that you look at and not the flowers at all. Some of these leaves seem to be made of velvet, or something even softer and more velvety than velvet, whilst the colours in them are like the patterns of a very beautiful turkey carpet. Others look like wonderful spearheads, or the tops are very ornamental park railings, green and red and orange, and all striped and spotted and speckled like the skin of newts or lizards. There are some leaves so large too, that they would almost make a carpet for a very small room, and so handsome that you might go into all the harbour dashes, chops in the world, without finding any carpet that would look nearly so well. Some are still larger, and those are the leaves of palm trees that bend down from high in the air, and at the end of the long bending stalks that spring from the top of the small slender stem. They are of such a soft, lovely green that it makes you cool even to look awful at them, and so graceful and delicate that you think of the fairies, but so big and strong that a giant might lie upon them and go to sleep without breaking them or crushing them down. And then there are wonderful cactuses so large that they are called trees, with trunks like great prickly green caterpillars, and branches like small or prickly green caterpillars stuck to them by the tail. But on these ugly branches there are flowers like beautiful purple stars, whilst in the pools or the rivers water lilies are floating that look like large purple flakes of snow. It is amongst flowers and leaves and trees like these that the hummingbirds fly about. Those are the wonderful goblets out of which they sip their nectar. But now about the sipping of nectar I have something to tell you, and when I have told it to you, you will know more than a good me people do, who think they know something about hummingbirds and natural history. Well it is this. The hummingbirds do not live only on the nectar in the flowers, as most people think they do, but on the insects that have been drowned in it, and which they suck up at the same time. You see the insects of course I mean little insects, flies or gnats, not large moths and butterflies, get into the tubes of the flowers to sip the nectar themselves, and they often fall into it and are not able to get themselves out again. But drown there, forward to them it is like a little lake or pond, a pond of nectar, and of course very nice, but still for all that it drowns them. There is hardly any flower cup that has not these drowned insects in it, and when the hummingbirds drink the nectar, they swallow the little insects at the same time. They could not live upon nectar only. They want animal food as it is called as well, and that is the way in which they get it. That is why when people have caught hummingbirds and given them only nectar or sugar and water, which is something like it, to live on, they have always died. There are no insects in it, no animal food. They had gravy you see, but no meat, and they wanted meat as well as gravy. So they died, the poor hummingbirds, but I think it is almost better for a living sunbeam to die than to be kept living in a cage. But now why do the Indians call the hummingbirds living sunbeams? Oh, but you will say I have told you that, and besides anybody could have guessed, it is because they are so bright and gleaming, and hover in the air as a sunbeam dances in it, or shoot through it as quickly and as brightly as a sunbeam shoots down from the sun. Well, yes, that is one explanation, but why should there not be two, as there were about the birds of paradise, so that you can choose the one you like best? For you know you are not a clever person yet. Well, there are two. For the Indians say that they are hummingbirds are called living sunbeams because they really are living sunbeams, just as you are called a little girl because you are a little girl. And how could there be a simpler explanation of a thing than that? And this is how it happened. Only you must remember that it was a very, very long time ago. In those old days the sun had not long sent his beams to earth, and it was only after they came there that the things upon the earth began to live. There had been no life at all before. It had all been dark and cold. It was only when the sun's beams began to shine upon the cold, dark earth that they warmed it into life and love. Now as first one beautiful thing, and then another began to live upon the earth, the sunbeams admired them all very much, but they did not envy them, for there was nothing there quite so beautiful as a sunbeam. But one day, as they were dancing upon the waters of the sea, they heard the fishes saying to each other, How beautiful are the sunbeams? Is there anything so beautiful as they? Our scales flash out brightly, but compared to them they are dull, even on the sunniest day. We should envy them. Were they alive like us? But of course, as it is, it is different. Are we not alive? said the sunbeams, and they felt sad and did not dance on the waves any more than that day. Then another day they were dancing on the leaves, and falling through them onto the shady ground underneath, checkering it with gold. How glorious are the sunbeams? said the leaves to each other, more glorious even than the birds or the butterflies that perch amongst us. Would that we were as beautiful? Do you envy them? said a butterfly who had overheard and felt annoyed. They have neither sense nor breath, are neither born nor die, envy us, if you will, who will have all these advantages and are so beautiful as well, much more so than yourselves, but do not however plain you may be envy what is not alive. Are we not alive? said the sunbeams, and they were discontented, and the clouds hid them, so that neither to trees nor the birds and butterflies within them seemed to be alive any more. And again the sunbeams were shining through a small window, wearing a wretched garret on a still more wretched bed, lay a man who had care and sorrow, yes and worse even than those in his heart. With that I were dead, he cried, as he clasped his hands on his forehead, how I envy the sunbeams, but no, I will not envy them, for they are not alive, then inanimate merely. Are we not alive? said the sunbeams, and does nobody envy us on that account, and the wretched ruin that had seemed quite cheerful whilst they were there became dark and dismal again as they withdrew. And now it was the sunbeams who envied everything, bird or beast or plant or leaf or flower, even the man and the garret, because they were alive. It is hard that we alone should be without life, thought they, and they complained to the sun. Give us life, they cried, we are more beautiful than anything here on earth, but nothing envies us because we are not alive. It is dreadful not to be envied, and do you really think, said the sun, that you who have given life to others have no life yourselves? Before I sent you to earth it was dark and cold and lifeless, it needed you to give it that for which you are now asked. Do not then be discontented any more, but be assured that you have life as much as anything that lives and grows upon the earth. Though to be sure it is of another kind, be satisfied therefore and rejoice in your loveliness. This answer of the sun satisfied most of the sunbeams, but there were some who were foolish and whom it did not satisfy. Give us such life as the children of the earth enjoy, cried these, the life that breathes and grows, that has a shape that is born and dies. That is the life that we would have. Be good to us and give us that. Then the sun set at the foolish sunbeams. I can give you such life as you ask for, and if you persist in asking it, I must for you are my children, and I cannot bear to see you unhappy. But remember if I once grant you this wish and give you the life that earth's children enjoy, you can never more be as you now are or enter into my palace, my golden palace again. Now you fly from me to the earth and from the earth back to me, but once you have earth's life, on earth you must remain and on earth you must die. You are immortal now. When you become children of the earth, you will be immortal as they are. Plover crest hummingbird. But the foolish sunbeams who could not understand what death should be persisted, and the sun who loved them because they were his children, had to do what they asked. So one night, when all the other sunbeams had flown back to him, he sent these foolish ones to sleep on the earth, which had never happened to them before, and there they lay all night, some in the flower cups, some under the leaves of the trees, without giving them any light at all, for when a sunbeam is asleep it can give no light. But in the morning, when their brother and sister sunbeams flew back to earth, they woke up, but the two did not know each other again, for the foolish sunbeams were not sunbeams any more, not real ones, that is to say. They flew about, still in the forests, and glanced through the trees, and hovered over the flowers in almost the same way as they had done before. But now they had a shape and wings, and they sipped the nectar out of the flower cups, which was a thing they had never even dreamed about. They were humming birds, and though their feathers were as bright as they had ever been, and though they had all of them long Latin names and a scientific description in books, still it was not quite the same, for it would take a lot of Latin and a lot of scientific description to make up for not being a sunbeam. But when the Indians came to know of the occurrence they called them living sunbeams, and it is easy to understand what they meant. And now you know, until you are a clever person, how humming birds came into the world, but you must not think that the other sunbeams, the real ones that have never changed into anything, are dead. Oh no indeed, how could they dance and play about as they do, if they were? End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 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 Sellas Chapter 8 Some Very Bright Humming Birds One of the most beautiful of all the humming birds, but we can say that of so many, is the rainbow humming bird. It is very large for a humming bird, so what will you think when I say that its body is about the size of a little wrens? A bird which perhaps you had been thinking was the smallest bird there is? Why? A humming bird that is as big or almost as big as a wren is a very big humming bird indeed, in fact quite a gigantic one. But now, the tail of this humming bird is very different to a wrens and makes it look still bigger because it is so long, three to three and a half inches I should think, and such a wonderful shape. It is forked, so you must think of a swallow first if you want to imagine it. But then you must imagine that the two feathers which make the fork of a swallow's tail are curved outwards, like two little scimitars, so that their tips are six inches apart from each other. Indeed they gleam as brightly as any scimitar does in the sun, but it is not like steel that they gleam for they are of the most lovely deep rich violet blue that you can imagine. Such a colour as was never seen anywhere else out of the rainbow, and now I come to think of it what these lovely feathers are most like is two little violet rainbows set back to back. You can think how lovely they look as they go darting through the air and I must tell you that the beautiful violet blue sends out gleams of other kinds of blues, lighter ones which are just as beautiful as the violet itself. On the opposite page you see the picture of a humming bird that is a good deal like this one, but it is not the same so the tail is not quite the same either. Now of course you will think, and you will be quite right to think so, that a bird that has a tail like two little violet rainbows will have the other parts of him beautiful as well. Well, the back of this bird is all green, a beautiful shining gleaming green, and his head is green too, at least it seems to be when you see it first, but as you look at it all at once the green changes into a heavenly violet blue to match the heavenly violet blue of its lovely rainbow tail. Under the throat it is green like the rest, but just in the centre of it there is a tiny little drop, just one or two little feathers of the very loveliest amethyst. Ah, fancy seeing a bird like that flying about and hovering over the flowers. Only you would not see him for you would not be able to see his wings, at least not properly they would move so fast. What you would see would be a little circle of hazy brown mist and right in the middle of it a little sparkling sun and on the other side gleaming through the mist two sweet little violet rainbows. Then all at once there would be a trail of light in the air and it would all be somewhere else, another sun and rainbows over another flower. Of course really a hummingbird would have flown from one flower to another but what it would look like would be a gleam of light, a sunbeam with a jewel flash at each end of it. Another hummingbird, the Sappho Comet, is about the same size as the last one and he is a lovely gleaming green too, an emerald green I think, on his head and neck and shoulders. But his throat is light blue, the colour of a most beautiful turquoise. But such a turquoise there is no other one in the world that ever gleamed and flashed and sparkling in that way because, you know, turquoises do not sparkle at all. At least nowhere else it is not their habit. But I think that some of the very finest of them, at least the lovely colours that were in them must have flown into that hummingbird's throat and begun to gleam and flash and sparkle there. Perhaps they begged to be allowed to as a very special favour. Then the tail of this hummingbird is forked too, like the other ones, but not in quite the same way. It is more like the fork of an arrow than two little rainbows turned back to back and instead of being violet it is all ruby and copper and topaz with a broad band of velvet black at each tip. I cannot tell you how brilliant those colours are, the ruby and the copper and the topaz they are so brilliant that if you were to take them into a dark room I really almost think they would light it up like a lamp or a candle. Oh it is a wonderful tale. You might think and think for quite a long time and yet you would never be able to think how bright, how wonderfully bright it is. But listen to what the Indians say. They say that once that hummingbird was out in a thunderstorm and the lightning got angry with him because he flew so fast and tried to strike him. It was jealous of him. That was the reason for the lightning likes to think itself faster than anything else. But although the lightning chased that hummingbird for a very long time it could only just touch his tail and there it has stayed. It was a flash of it which was not enough to hurt ever since. You know how bright the lightning is. That will help you to think what that hummingbird's tail is like. And you know now what his throat is like. Fancy seeing them both together, flashing, sparkling, gleaming, beaming, dancing, dancing in the glorious glowing sunshine of South America. But now in the splendid breasted hummingbird all the glory is upon his breast, his throat. Once I think, at least the Indians say so, he must have flown up very high. Yes, right up to heaven and the door was open and he tried to fly in. But he could not. They turned him away. But the glory of heaven had just fallen upon his breast and he flew back with it there to earth. It is green, that glory, the most marvellous light gleaming green. But all at once, as you look at it, it has changed to blue, an exquisite light turquoise blue. And then, just as you are going to cry out, Oh, but it's blue, not green. It is green again. And then blue again, before you can say that it is green. All at once, it is both at the same time, for each has changed into the other. It is the throat gorget. You know I explained to you on which this glorious colour falls. But this bird has such a large one that it covers the breast as well as the throat and goes up quite high on each side till it meets the deep rich velvety black of the head. Of course, this deep velvet black makes the wonderful green and blue look all the more wonderful, for it is a dark background for them to shine out against. And your mother will explain to you what a background is. Then, on the back this hummingbird is green too. In fact, you might call him the emerald hummingbird, but it is darker than that other green. If anything so bright can be darker and without the lovely turquoise glue in it. It is a glory, but not such a glory as the one on his breast. Not the glory of heaven that fell upon him at its gates. Perhaps it is his memory of it as he flew away. But now I feel sure you will ask why the same brightness which streamed out of heaven and spoiled the plumage of the birds of paradise should have made the plumage of this hummingbird so beautiful. Well, it is a difficult question. But perhaps it is because the hummingbird was thinking of heaven and wishing to get into it, whilst the birds of paradise had got tired of being in heaven and were only thinking of earth. That might have made a very great difference. And perhaps you will say, if the hummingbirds are sunbeams that have been changed into birds, why should some of them have been made more beautiful afterwards in other ways? Well, as to that, there are a great many different kinds of hummingbirds, more than 400 as I told you, so perhaps they were not quite all of them sunbeams first. And besides, even when a bird has been a sunbeam first, something else might happen to it when it had become a bird. At any rate, if one explanation does not seem satisfactory, there is always the other and one of them must be the right one, until you are a clever person which will not be yet a while. So now we will go on for there are some other hummingbirds with other explanations waiting. The glow-glow hummingbird, I do like that name, is smaller than any of the other three we have talked about, for it is less than half the size of a little wren. Its head and its back are shining green. You will be thinking all the hummingbirds are green, but wait a little. It's breast is white, but it's throat. Oh, it's throat. What is it? What can it be called? It is a rose that has burst into flame. No, it is a flame trying to look like a rose. No, it is neither of these. It is one of those stars that are of all colours and change from one to the other as you look at them. From green to gold, from gold to topaz, from topaz to rosy red. Only this star changed into every colour at once, which was wonderful, and as he did that, and this was still more wonderful, he flew all to pieces and little bits of him were scattered through the whole air, and when the sun rose and shone upon them, they were all hummingbirds flying about with wings and feathers and with long, latin names so that there should be no doubt about it. It was wonderful, wonderful, but yet it was not quite so wonderful as the colours upon this hummingbird's throat. The little flame bearer, there is a name for you, is a still smaller hummingbird than the last one. Indeed, his body without the feathers would not be very much larger than a very large humble bee. Here, again, all the wonder is on its throat, which is topaz and green and copper, all glowing and sparkling together, as if they were all married to one another, and each of them was trying to get the upper hand. Ah, was there ever such a sweet little gembird? He is a jewel mounted on wings and set in the air. Only sometimes, when he hovers just underneath a flower, he seems hanging from its tip like a pendant. Costa's coquette. That means that someone named Costa, some Portuguese gentleman was the first to write about it, is larger than the little flame bearer, though not half so big as a wren, he tries to be brighter. Whether he is brighter, I am sure I cannot say. To tell properly, one ought to see them both hovering under the same flower, or at least very close together, and even then, one would only feel bewildered. But this one's head and throat are all one splendour, one marvellous gleam of rosy, pinky, rosy pink, pinky rose, magenta. Only if you say that that is what it is, it will change into violet and contradict you, and then, if you say it is violet, it will change into topaz and contradict you again. So you had better say nothing, for one does not want to be contradicted, but just hold your breath and watch it. It will change quite soon enough, even then, long before you are tired of its rosy, pinky, rosy pink, pinky rose, magenta, which is a colour you have not seen, and which I have not told you about before. Only if you must say something about it whilst you are looking at it, something besides, oh, I mean, say it is a hummingbird, that will be quite sufficient, and not one of its colours can be offended with you then, for not mentioning them and mentioning the others. Now I must tell you that the feathers of this little bird's throat, of that wonderful gleaming throat gorget, grow out on each side into two little peaks, two little pointed tongues of rose, pink, magenta flame, but hush, and he can spread them out and shoot them forward, as well as the whole of the gorget in quite a wonderful way. When he does that, what he seems to do, is to strike a great number of matches at the same time, and from each one, as he strikes it, there bursts out hundreds and hundreds of bright sparkling jewels of flame. Ah, you should see him strike his jewel matches, all together, all the jewels that there are, all struck in one second as he whizzes about in the air. His back is all green and so bright, if only you cover up his head and throat. If you don't cover them, or as soon as you uncover them again, you hardly seem to see it. It is no brighter then than a glow worm is when a very bright star is shooting through the air. Now we come to the splendid cocket, a little bird not half the size of a golden crested wren, which is the smallest bird that we in this country know anything about, smaller even than the common wren. He has a crest too, this little hummingbird, a very fine one of chestnut feathers, not sticking up on the top of the head, as so many crests do, but going backwards after the head has come to an end. So that it makes a little chestnut feather awning for the neck to be under. But just where they spring from the head, each of these chestnut feathers is black, and at their tips too they have all a little black spot, and this makes them look still prettier than if they were all chestnut. When the little bird spreads out this fine crest of his, like a fan, for he can do that, all the feathers in it stand out separately from each other, and then he looks like a little sun in the centre of his own rays. Yes, a sun, because he is so very bright. He has a gorgette, or perhaps you would prefer to call it a lapet, of feathers on his throat and breast of the most glorious radiant green colour, and from it there shoot out one on either side a pair of the very loveliest and most delicate little fairy wings that ever you never saw, for I feel sure that you never have seen anything at all like them. I do not mean, of course, that they are real wings to fly with. No, it would be funny if a bird had two pairs of that kind, but ornamental ones, wings for the little hen-humming bird, who has none, to look at and say, how beautiful, how extraordinarily becoming. Each of these dear little wings is made by a few delicate long slender feathers of a light chestnut colour. The same as the feathers of the crest only, instead of being tipped with black, these ones are tipped with a spot of the same lovely green that there is on the throat and breast. The longest of them, which is in the middle, is nearly an inch long, which is very long indeed when you think how small the little birdie is, and it stands out a quarter of an inch beyond the two next longest ones on each side of it, and these are almost a quarter of an inch longer than the ones that come next. If you hold out your hand with the finger spread out and imagine the middle one a good deal longer and the little finger and thumb much shorter, then you will know the shape of these dear little fairy wings. Only, of course, feathers are much more elegant than fingers, even than pretty little fingers. Think how pretty something in muslin or puff lace like that on a dress would be, but it is ever, oh, ever so much prettier on a little hummingbird in little chestnut feathers with little green spangles at their tips. And that is why I call them fairy wings, for I think if any pair of wings that are not a fairies could be pretty enough for a fairy, these would be the ones. And I think if you saw this sweet little hummingbird hanging in the air with his breast all flashing and sparkling and with his chestnut crest spread out above it, and his little chestnut and star-spangled wings flying out on each side of it, you would think him almost as pretty as a fairy could be. You would think his fairy wings the real ones that he was flying with, because you would see them, whilst the other ones would be moving so quickly that they would be only like a mist or haze, a little knight that he had made for himself for the star of his beauty to shine in. Now just try to imagine how lovely that little hummingbird must be. Can you understand anyone wanting to kill him? But now that I have told you about that wretched little demon with his charms to send people to sleep and those two bad bottles of his or rather the powders inside them, apathy and vanity, I dare say you can understand it. If I had not told you about him, I don't think you would have been able to. Princess Helen's cocket, how proud he ought to be of a name like that, is a little hummingbird something like the last one. He is a little smaller I think, but whether he is a little prettier too or not quite so pretty or only as pretty, all that I shall leave to you. It is you who will have to decide. His back is all of a golden green and his head, which has a forked crest at the back of it like a swallow's tail, is a beautiful, rich, dark, velvety green. So that would make a pretty little bird, would it not? Even without anything else. But he has something else. Two or three other things in fact, which are so, oh, so very pretty. First, on each side of the back of the head, just under each fork of the little swallow-tailed crest, there is a little delicate tuft of feathers which rise up and spread out upon each side in such a graceful little curve. But these feathers are not like other feathers. They are something like the funny feathers that the birds of paradise have. For they are quite thin, like threads, and an inch long, which, although it is not quite so long as those, is yet a good length when you think of what a little thing this hummingbird is. These pretty little feathers are of a deep velvety green colour, the same colour as his swallow-tailed crest, and there are three on each side, three little velvet green feather threads floating out on each side behind his head. On his throat, there is a gorgett of gleaming, jewellty green, much lighter than the other greens, more like emerald, but with a goldeny bronzy wash in it as well. Just think how beautiful that must be. And then, lower down on his throat, underneath the green gorgett, as if all that were not enough for him, this hummingbird has something else. We will call it a tippit, which flies out all round his neck and especially on each side of it. A tippit, or a ruffle, perhaps that is rather a better word, a ruffle of velvet black feathers in front, and of light chestnut feathers with velvet black stripes, like a tiger, on each side. As for his tail, it spreads out into a dear little fan, and the fan is chestnut and black too, broad stripes of chestnut and narrow stripes of black, with a broad patch of black where it begins, which looks like the handle of the fan. What a pretty, pretty bird! Fancy a little birdie that is only about two inches long, and has a crest like a swallow-tail on his head, a gorgett, or lapit, on his throat, or ruffle, just underneath the gorgett, and a little spray of feather threads on each side of his head, just underneath the crest. Fancy killing such a little fairy bird as that? Fancy wanting to kill him, but it is all a little demon. It is he who has blown about his nasty powders and frozen the hearts of the poor women who are really so kind. At any rate, they would be if only he would let them. Did I say such a little fairy bird? I think I did, and I was quite right, for it is just this very little hummingbird that the fairies are so fond of riding on. They go two at a time sometimes. One sits on his back and another lies on the broad fan of his tail, and the one on the back uses the little feather threads as reins. It is so grand. The hummingbird dashes up at the fairies' own flower door and hovers there till she is ready to come out and then dashes away with her to another flower where another fairy lives. And that is how the fairies call upon each other in countries where there are hummingbirds. Perhaps you will think that a hummingbird, even quite a little hummingbird, and there are none of them big, is rather a large Gigi for a fairy to ride on. But you must remember that in tropical countries fairies grow to quite a remarkable size. Well, that is eight hummingbirds that I have tried to describe to you, though it is very like trying to describe a sunset to someone who has never seen one. And perhaps you think I have chosen all the most beautiful ones first, and that there are no more left which are quite so pretty. But I think I can find just one more that is not such a very plain bird, not a bird you would call ugly if you were to see it hovering about over a bed of geraniums or under a cluster of honeysuckle, some bright spring or summer morning when you happen to go out into your garden. So we will take that one and if he is not pretty enough you must just try to put up with him. He is called the Sun Beauty. Perhaps you would think him dark at first for his head and back and shoulders are of such a rich deep velvety green that it almost goes into black velvet. All except one little spot on the forehead just above the beak and that never can look quite black. Sometimes it does almost just for one second but the next second it flashes into green again and oh how it gleams and sparkles and throws out little jewels little splashes of sunfire all round it. What a wonderful green it is at first and then. Oh what a wonderful. But really there is no proper name for that colour. I was going to say blue and perhaps it is more like blue than anything else but nothing else is quite like it. Then just at the beginning of this hummingbird's throat just under the chin there are a few feathers that are like a kind of dusky smoked magenta bronze jewellery and a little farther down they gleam into ruddy bronze and coppery topaz and then oh what is that? The very sun himself has flashed out from his throat from his gorgette yes a little flake of the sun a sunflake instead of a snowflake oh it is such a gorgette a gorgette of golden topaz of coppery gold of green gold of silver gold of silver of gleaming white and it spreads out on each side like a wonderful fan and shoots out in front of all the other feathers such a gorgette the feathers in it are not feathers at all I do not think they can be feathers they are sun flakes as I have told you that is what this hummingbird is like on the throat underneath the throat on the breast he becomes green again not the dark velvet green of the back but a still more glorious green gleaming and brilliant but soft and rich at the same time it is a green that changes too changes almost into blue I will tell you how that is once this green this wonderful lovely green did not think itself lovely enough which was funny so it said to the blue of the violet and the turquoise and the amethys and the sapphire can make part of me but I must be the greater part that is not fair cried the blues of all those lovely things we will come since you have invited us but we intend to have the upper hand come then said the green and let us fight for the mastery whichever wins will be improved by it we will struggle together and we will see which is the strongest so they came those blues of wonder from the violet, the turquoise the sapphire and the amethys yes and from the sky the stars and the sea as well and they fell in a glory on that glorious green that had been there before them and fought with it to possess the breast of that hummingbird and they are fighting to possess it now they gleam and flash and sparkle and glow and try to outglory each other but I think that that wonderful green is the strongest although he has such a lot of blues to fight against but stronger than any and then all of them is the sun on that hummingbird's gorget that gorget of gold and topaz and copper and bronze and silver and gleaming white that is what that hummingbird is like and that is how he got some of his wonderful colours so at least the Indians say only some of them say that it was the blues who were there first and asked the green to come but always in history you will find that there are different opinions about the same thing people are not all agreed even about the battle of Waterloo so you see we have been able to find one other handsome hummingbird at any rate and then there is the hermit hummingbird I must just describe him his head and neck are brown the whole of his back is brown his wings, his throat and his breast are brown and all the rest of him is brown why then, he is all brown without any colours at all unless there are some lying asleep and ready to wake up and dart out all of a sudden in the way I have explained to you no, there are no colours either asleep or awake or at any rate, hardly any compared to the hummingbirds I have been telling you about this one is just a plain dull bird as plain and as dull almost as his wife for that you know is what the wives of hummingbirds are like then, is he a hummingbird at all? surely he is not one he must be some other bird oh no, he is not he is a hummingbird but he is a hermit hummingbird I have not told you before but now I will tell you that there are some hummingbirds in fact a good many that have no bright colours at all and they are called hermits a hermit you know is a person who lives in a cell or cave and wears a long brown gown with a hood at one end of it for his head and never dresses gaily or goes out to see things but has what we should consider a very dull life only as he likes it that makes it all right for him so these dull coloured hummingbirds are called hermits not because they live in cells because of course they do not but because they have no bright things to wear but only brown gowns like hermits but now as hummingbirds used once to be sunbeams and are still living sunbeams that have been changed into birds how does it happen that any of them have become hermits with nothing showy about them that is a thing which requires an explanation so it is lucky that there is one already for it in the next chapter not all the things that require an explanation are so lucky as that some of them go on requiring one all their lives and yet never get what they require I have known several of that sort at the end of chapter 8