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"We shall never do that," said the proud Birds of Paradise. "We shall stay down on earth and be kings and 'prima donnas' amongst the other birds." So the Phenix let them out, and they flew down through the warm summer sky, looking like soft suns or trembling stars or colours out of the sunrise or sunset, they were so beautiful.

Then the birds of earth flew around them and did them homage, and, when they sang, the nightingale stood silent and hid her head for shame, and would never sing in the daytime any more, but only at night when the beautiful strangers were asleep. That is why the nightingale sings by night and not by day--only since the Birds of Paradise have lost their voice she does sing in the daytime sometimes, just a little.

So the Birds of Paradise were kings and "prima donnas" amongst the birds of earth, and they were happy--for a time. They were not quite so happy after a little while, for they got tired of hearing the birds praise them, and, wherever they looked, they saw nothing to give them pleasure. The earth, indeed, was beautiful, but they remembered Paradise, and that made it seem ugly. There was nothing for them to see that was worth the seeing, or to hear that was worth the listening to, except their own beauty and their own song. But that reminded them of Paradise, and they could not bear to be reminded of it now that they had lost it for ever. In fact they were miserable, and it was not long before they were all fluttering outside the gates of Paradise, and begging the Phenix to let them in. But the Phenix said, "No, I cannot. I warned you that the gates of Paradise could only be passed twice, once in and once out, and then no more. I tried to keep you from going, but you chose to go, and now you must stay outside. You can never enter Paradise again." "If we cannot enter it," said the poor Birds of Paradise, "let us at least forget it. Take away our beautiful voices, so that, when we sing, we shall not think of all the joys we have lost. Let our song be no more than the lark's or the nightingale's, or make us only able to twitter, and not sing at all. Then we can listen to the lark and the nightingale, and perhaps, in time, we may grow to admire them. As it is, we must either sing or be silent. We do not like to sit silent, and when we sing we think only of Paradise." "Yes," said the Phenix, "I will take your voice, your beautiful voice of song." So he took it, and that is why the Birds of Paradise never sing at all now, not even as the lark and the nightingale sing.

Now, the Birds of Paradise that live on the earth to-day do not live all over it, as they used to do in those old days when they could hear the lark and the nightingale. It is only a very small part of the world that they live in now--small, I mean, compared to the rest of it--and there are no larks or nightingales there. I will tell you where it is. Far away over the deep sea, farther than Africa, farther than India, farther even than Burma or Siam, there are a number of great islands and small islands and middling-sized islands, which lie between Asia and Australia, and all of these together are called the Malay Archipelago. The largest of all these islands, and the one that is farthest away too, is called New Guinea, and it is a very large island indeed, the largest, in fact, in the world after Australia, which, as you know, is so large that we call it a continent. Round about this great island of New Guinea, and not very far from its shores, there are some other islands which are quite tiny in comparison, and it is here, just in this one great island and in these few small islands near it, that the Birds of Paradise live. They do not live in any of the other islands of the Malay Archipelago, but only just here in the ones that are farthest away of all.

It would take you weeks to go in a steamer to where the Birds of Paradise live, and if you were to go, not in a steamer but in a ship with sails, it would take you longer still. But when you got there you would not see the Birds of Paradise flying all about, as soon as you went ashore out of the ship or the steamer, as you would see sparrows here. Oh no, Birds of Paradise are not so common as that, even in their own country. They do not come into the towns, like sparrows, either, but live in the great forests where people do not often go, and even when one does go into them, it is difficult to see them amongst the great tall trees and the broad-fronded ferns and the long, hanging creepers that make a tangle from one tree to another.

Other flowers are golden like the sun and grow all together in clusters, whilst others, again, grow on the branches of trees and hang down from them by long stalks which are like threads, each thread-stalk strung with flowers, as a thread is strung with beads. Only these flower-beads are as large as sunflowers, with colours varying from orange to red, and with beautiful, deep, purple-red spots upon them.

But if you had wings like the Birds of Paradise, and could fly over the tops of the trees that make the forest, and look down into a leafy meadow instead of up into a leafy sky, then you would see the most gloriously beautiful flowers growing in that meadow, just as the daisies and buttercups grow in the meadows that you run over, here. For flowers love the light of the sun, and they struggle up into it through the leaves that keep it out. To them the leaves are not as the sky, but as the clouds that shut the sky out, and as they are clouds that will never roll away , the only thing for them to do is to climb up to them and pierce them, and see the sky, with the sun shining in it, on the other side. So whilst a few flowers stay in the shade below, most of them grow and struggle up into the light and air above, and they are all in such a hurry to get there that every one tries to grow faster than all the others. Ah! what a race it is, a race to reach the sun. You have heard of all sorts of races, and some, perhaps, you have seen; running-races, races in sacks, boat-races, horse-races , but you never either saw or heard of a fairer, lovelier, more delicate race than a race of flowers to reach the sun. Think of it, all over those great, wide, far-stretching forests, forests stretching away like the sea, and only bounded by the sea! Think of all the millions of flowers there must be in them, with all their delicate shapes, and rich, fragrant scents and glorious colours, and then think of them all growing up together, each trying to be the first to see the sun. So eager they all are, but so gentle. There is no pushing, nothing rude or rough. But as the leaves grow thinner, and the light shines more and more through them, they tremble and sigh with joy, and one says to another, "We are getting nearer--nearer. I can see him almost; we shall soon be bathed in his light." And so they all grow and grow till at last they gleam softly through the soft leaves, and see the beautiful deep blue sky and the glorious, golden sun. Yes, that is a lovely race indeed--as anything to do with flowers is lovely--and it is a race upwards, to the sky and to the sun. Not all races are of that kind.

It is in forests like those that the Birds of Paradise live; and now that we know something about where they live, we will find out something about them.

The Great Bird of Paradise

So now you know what kind of birds the Birds of Paradise are, and how very beautiful they are, and you know how gloriously beautiful the Great Bird of Paradise is, and how it is killed and not allowed to live and be happy, just because it is so beautiful. But now these Great Birds of Paradise live only in some quite small islands and just in one part of one large one, and although there may be a good many of them where they do live, yet if they are always being killed in that way, very soon there will be no more of them left. Then there will be no more Great Birds of Paradise in the world--for they do not live outside those islands--and when they are once gone they can never, never come again.

The Red Bird of Paradise

Then there is another very beautiful Bird of Paradise which is called the Red Bird of Paradise. It is no use trying to find out whether he or the one I have just been telling you about is the most beautiful, because if somebody were to think that one were, somebody else would be sure to have a different opinion. But now I will tell you what this Red Bird of Paradise is like, and then you will know how beautiful to think him. You know those lovely plumes that I told you about, that the Great Bird of Paradise has growing from both his sides, under the wings, and how he lifts up his wings and shoots them right up into the air, so that they fall all over him, like two most beautiful fountains that meet in the air and mingle their waters together. Now the Red Bird of Paradise has those plumes--those feather-fountains--too, and he can shoot them up into the air and let them fall all over him, and look out from amongst them as they bend and wave, and think "How lovely I am!" just the same as the Great Bird of Paradise can. They are not so long, it is true, but then they are very thick, and of a most glorious crimson colour--such a colour as you see, sometimes, in the western sky, when the sun is flushing it, just before he sinks down for the night. People talk about a sky like that and call it a glorious sunset when they see it in Switzerland. One can see it here, too, if one likes, but it is not usual to talk about it or even to look at it, unless one is in Switzerland . Fancy a bird that looks out of a crimson sunset of feathers--crimson, but with beautiful white tips to them! Crimson and white, that is almost more splendid than orange-gold and mauvy-brown; unless you like orange-gold and mauvy-brown better--it is all a matter of taste.

But there is another thing that the Red Bird of Paradise has, which the Great Bird of Paradise has not got at all. He has two little crests of feathers--beautiful metallic green feathers--on his forehead. Just fancy! Not one crest, merely, but two. One talks about a feather in one's cap ; but what is a feather in one's cap compared to two crests of feathers on one's forehead? And such crests! And, besides his crimson sunset plumes with their white tips and the two little lovely green crests on his forehead, this bird has two wonderful feathers in his tail; they are not feathers at all, really, that is to say, the soft part of them on each side of the quill, which we call the web, is gone, and there is only the quill left, but it is such a funny sort of quill that you would never think it was one. It is flat and smooth and shiny, and quite a quarter of an inch wide. In fact it looks like a ribbon, a beautiful, black, glossy ribbon, twenty-two inches long.

These two wonderful ribbons--I told you there were two--hang down in graceful curves as the bird sits on the branch of a tree, first a curve out and then in and then out again, just at the tips, so that the two together make quite a pretty figure. Of course, when there is any wind at all, they float gracefully about and look very pretty indeed, and when the Red Bird of Paradise flies, his two wonderful ribbons float in the air behind him, just as if he had been into a linen-draper's shop and bought something, and flown out again with it, in his tail. And yet, to make these two pretty ribbons--which are feathers, really, though they do not look like them--the soft part of the feather, which is usually the pretty part, has been taken away, and only the quill, which is usually almost ugly by comparison, has been left. And yet they are so handsome. That is because Dame Nature is such a wonderful workwoman. She can make almost anything she tries to, out of any kind of material.

So, however beautiful this bird is, you must only want to see him flying about in the forests or gardens of his native land, if ever you go there. If you do not go there, then you must not mind, but you must try to imagine him, which is almost as good as seeing him, if you do it properly. But you must never want to see him in a cage that is smaller than a large garden with trees in it, or dead in a glass case or a hat. It is better that beautiful birds should be alive and you not see them, than that they should be killed or made miserable for you to look at.

Well, it is this same naked, frizzly-haired Papuan who kills the beautiful Red Bird of Paradise as well as the Great one, but he does not do it with bows and arrows, but in quite another way, which I will tell you about.

But now there is one particular fruit which the Red Bird of Paradise likes better than any other, much better, even, than a ripe fig. It is a fruit which I do not know the name of, in fact I am not quite sure that it has a name, except in some language which we would neither of us understand. But you know what an arum lily is, and in those forests that I told you of there is a kind of arum lily which climbs up trees, for there are climbing lilies there as well as climbing palm-trees. This climbing arum lily has a red fruit, and it is this red fruit which the Red Bird of Paradise thinks so exceedingly nice. It will go anywhere to get that fruit, and the naked black man with frizzly hair knows that it will; so he makes a trap for it with the very fruit that it is so fond of.

But besides the fruit, two other things are necessary for making this trap; one of them is a forked stick like the handle of a catapult, and the other is some string. The Papuan soon cuts the stick, either with a knife that he has bought of a white man, or with a sharp piece of stone or flint, and the string he makes from some creeper, or by rolling the inner bark of a tree between his hands. When he has done this he takes the fruit and ties it to the forked stick, then he climbs up a tree that he knows the Red Birds of Paradise come to perch on, and ties the stick, with the fruit fastened to it, to one of the branches. To do this he takes a very long piece of string, one end of which hangs right down to the ground, and he ties it so cleverly that he has only to pull the string for the stick, with the fruit on it, to come away from the branch, just as a sash that is tied in a bow will come undone when you pull one of the ends. Then the black Papuan climbs down from the tree, again, and sits underneath it with the end of the long string in his hand, all ready to pull it when the right time comes.

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.

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.

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 rain-drops 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 to gleam and to 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 diamond, 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 fire lighted 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 , can be black, and yet have all sorts of colours in it at the same time.

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 had forgotten the Blue Bird of Paradise.

Now that is all I am 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.

Well, this makes the sixth 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 forty or fifty different kinds, and, of course, if I were to describe them all, or anything like all , 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, for 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.

About all Birds of Paradise, and Some Explanations

"The two hens were sitting quietly on a branch, and the four cocks, dressed in their very best, their ruffs of green and yellow standing out, giving them a handsome appearance about the head and neck" , "their long flowing plumes so arranged that every feather seemed combed out, and the long wires" "stretched well out behind, were dancing in a circle round them." "It was an interesting sight." "First one and then another would advance a little nearer to a hen, and she, coquette-like" , "would retire a little, pretending not to care for any advances. A shot was fired, contrary to our expressed wish, there was a strange commotion, and two of the cocks flew away" , "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 a rest, the males came a little nearer to the dark brown hens. Quarrelling ensued, and in the end all six birds flew away."

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 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.

About Humming-Birds, and Some More Explanations

You can remember it by that line, which is from a poem by Mrs. Hemans, a clever lady whom your mother will tell you about. 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, it is the ones that live in America and not India that we mean. The ones that live in India we call Hindoos. 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 Humming-birds live--birds that are so beautiful as they are want a world to themselves to live in.

We have named the Humming-birds 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.

The humming-bird moth and the Humming-bird 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 the 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 a little like an 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 Humming-birds, or living sunbeams, are all of them small birds, yet they are not all of 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 sabre or even a sickle, and one Humming-bird 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 length, some are shorter than a quite short pin, whilst others are longer than a very long darning-needle.

Of course there is a reason for the beaks of Humming-birds 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 fingerstall or a periwinkle into its shell. If the part of the flower that holds the nectar is straight, then the beak of the Humming-bird 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 now it was the sunbeams who envied everything--bird or beast, or plant or leaf or flower --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 the earth, it was dark and cold and lifeless. It needed you, to give it that for which you now ask. 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's 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 said to 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 nevermore 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 when 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 mortal as they are."

Some very Bright Humming-Birds

But listen to what the Indians say. They say that once that Humming-bird 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 Humming-bird for a very long time, it could only just touch his tail, and there it has stayed--a little 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 Humming-bird's tail is like. And you know, now, what his throat is like. Fancy seeing them both together, flashing, sparkling, gleaming, beaming, glancing, dancing in the glorious, glowing sunshine of South America.

But now in the Splendid-breasted Humming-bird all the glory is upon his breast, his throat. Once, I think , he must have flown 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 is blue, not green," it is green again, and then blue again before you can say that it is green, and then, all at once, it is both at the same time, for each has changed into the other.

And I think if you saw this sweet little Humming-bird 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 night that he had made for himself for the star of his beauty to shine in.

That is what this Humming-bird 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 , so it said to the blue of the violet and the turquoise and the amethyst and the sapphire: "Come and 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, the other 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 amethyst--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 Humming-bird. And they are fighting to possess it now. They gleam and flash and sparkle and glow, and try to out-glory 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 than all of them is the sun on that Humming-bird's gorget, that gorget of gold and topaz, and copper and bronze, and silver and gleaming white.

Hermit Humming-Birds and Two Other Ones

Now, this poor Hermit Humming-bird was unhappy because he alone had no colours, and because all the other Humming-birds laughed at him. He complained of it to the sun, who was his father, and explained how it had happened. "It is unfortunate," said the sun; "but since I was unable to shine upon you, when you awoke, I cannot give you my own livery to wear now. But do not be unhappy. The world is full of brightness and beauty, and if you go about asking for some of it from those who have it, none of them will refuse you, when they know that you are one of my children. They will grant it you for the love of me, for I am loved of all that live upon the earth. In this way, though I cannot clothe you directly from myself, it will come to the same thing in the end, for it is through me that all things have their beauty, so that in having what was theirs you will have what is mine, and still you will be a living sunbeam. Only do not ask any of your brother Humming-birds to give you anything, because then you will not be under an obligation to them."

So the poor Hermit Humming-bird went about through the world, asking all the beautiful things in it for some of their beauty, and not one that he asked refused him, for the love of his father the sun. He begged of the clouds at sunset, when they were all crimson lake, and at sunrise, when they were all topaz and amber, and all three of these lovely colours fell upon his throat and struggled for the mastery, like the green and blue on the breast of that other Humming-bird that I have told you about. Then he begged of the bluest stars in the sky, and just on the outer edge of his now lovely throat, on the edge of that shining gorget, there fell such a blue as made one feel in heaven only to look at it. After that he begged of the sea that the sun was shining on in the morning, and now his head was of the loveliest pale sea-green, and then, again, he begged of it a little later in the day, and his back became a darker green, almost, if not quite, as lovely as the lovely one on his head. Thus he went about the world, begging and asking, and he did not forget either the jewels, or the flowers, or the colours that live in the rainbow. And at the end of the day this Humming-bird that had been all brown, and that his brothers had called a hermit, was one of the loveliest of all the Humming-birds, and his English name was the All-glorious Humming-Bird. He was not called a hermit any more, after that, but those Humming-birds that had called him one, and laughed at him when he was brown, were changed into hermits themselves. That is how there came to be Hermit Humming-birds in the world, and one of them is the one that surprised you so much when I described him to you, because he was all brown. They are all of them brown, but you must not laugh at them, for all that, even though they did at their brother. They have their punishment, and it is bad enough to be punished and made all brown, without being laughed at about it as well.

And then there is the Humming-bird that the Indians call the Jewel-flower-sunrise-and-sunset-Humming-bird . I have forgotten what his English name is--I am not quite sure if he has one. This Humming-bird was very beautiful to begin with, so beautiful, indeed, that the flowers, as he hovered over them, fell in love with him and wished to give him their colours to wear, for their sakes. But the Humming-bird did not want their colours, for he thought his own were much more beautiful. "If you sparkled like jewels," he said, "as well as being soft and bright, then it would be different. But your beauty is too homely. You are not sufficiently refulgent." .

The Cock-of-the-Rock and the Lyre-Bird

The two other kinds of Cock-of-the-Rock are very handsome birds, too. One of them has all its plumage orange-coloured, instead of crimson, and the other is of a colour between orange and crimson. So, if you were travelling from one part of South America to another, it would seem as if the same bird was getting brighter and brighter or darker and darker all the way, for the three different kinds do not live in the same parts of the country, but in different parts that join each other. Only, of course, you would have to go in the right direction, which would be, first, through the forests of British Guiana, then along the banks of the great river Amazon--which is the largest river in the world--then up the mountains of Peru, and then, still higher, up those of Ecuador. Or, you might start from Ecuador and go all the way to British Guiana. If you get an atlas and look for the map of South America, your mother will soon show you where all these places are.

That is how the Lyre-bird got its tail, and why it is, now, a very beautiful, as well as a very musical, bird. But what its tail was like before Apollo gave it the one it has now, that I cannot tell you, for it has never been known to allude to the subject, and it would hardly do to ask it. We only know that it was quite ordinary. But, do you know, Apollo never quite liked the Lyre-bird's imitating him, even though he had told it that it might, and so, not so very long afterwards, he left the country. He went to Greece--it was a very long time ago--and he has not gone back to Australia yet.

Now you may be sure that a bird with a tail like that has his playing ground, where he may come and show it to his wife or sweetheart; for it is only the male bird who has it--like the others--though, really, I cannot think what Apollo was about, not to give it to the hen as well, for he was always a very polite god. The Lyre-bird's playground is a small, round hillock--which he makes all himself--and there he will come and walk about, raising his magnificent tail right up into the air, and spreading it out in the most beautiful and graceful way. And, as he does this, he will sing so beautifully, sometimes his own notes, which are very pretty ones, and sometimes those of other birds, all of which he can imitate quite well. But, of course, as Apollo has left Australia, he cannot imitate him any more now, and after such a long time he has forgotten what he learnt, unless, indeed, his own notes are what Apollo used to play. But, if that is the case, he must have left off singing his old song, and I do not think he would have done that.

This wonderful bird builds a wonderful nest with a roof to it, so that he can get right inside it and be quite hidden from sight, tail and all, although he is so large--almost as large as a pheasant, even without counting his tail. As a rule it is only little birds that make nests like that, and not big ones. The Lyre-bird's nest is something like the one that our little wren makes--which perhaps you have seen--only of course ever so much bigger. Only one egg is laid in it, and out of it comes one of the queerest little birds you can imagine, all covered with white, fluffy down, and with no tail at all that you can see, so that you would never think he was going to grow into a Lyre-bird. It takes him four years to get that wonderful tail. Apollo did not mean him to have it, until he was quite grown up--it was not a thing to be entrusted to children.

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