Probably, when they feign death in their captor's hand, they are in
reality very near to death.
CHAPTER XVI.
HUMMING-BIRDS.
Humming-birds are perhaps the very loveliest things in nature, and many
celebrated writers have exhausted their descriptive powers in vain
efforts to picture them to the imagination. The temptation was certainly
great, after describing the rich setting of tropical foliage and flower,
to speak at length of the wonderful gem contained within it; but they
would in this case have been wise to imitate that modest novel-writer
who introduced a blank space on the page where the description of his
matchless heroine should have appeared. After all that has been written,
the first sight of a living humming-bird, so unlike in its beauty all
other beautiful things, comes like a revelation to the mind. To give any
true conception of it by means of mere word-painting is not more
impossible than it would be to bottle up a supply of the "living
sunbeams" themselves, and convey them across the Atlantic to scatter
them in a sparkling shower over the face of England.
Doubtless many who have never seen them in a state of nature imagine
that a tolerably correct idea of their appearance can be gained from
Gould's colossal monograph. The pictures there, however, only represent
dead humming-birds. A dead robin is, for purposes of bird-portraiture,
as good as a live robin; the same may be said of even many
brilliant-plumaged species less aerial in their habits than
humming-birds.
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