And that was the last I ever
saw of it.
The case of this small "winged gem," still wandering nameless in the
wilds, reminds me of yet another bird seen and lost, also remarkable for
its diminutive size. For years I looked for it, and when the wished-for
opportunity came, and it was in my power to secure it, I refrained; and
Fate punished me by never permitting me to see it again. On several
occasions while riding on the pampas I had caught glimpses of this
minute bird flitting up mothlike, with uncertain tremulous flight, and
again dipping into the weeds, tall grass, or thistles. Its plumage was
yellowish in hue, like sere dead herbage, and its extremely slender body
looked longer and slimmer than it was, owing to the great length of its
tail, or of the two middle tail-feathers. I knew that it was a
Synallaxis--a genus of small birds of the Woodhewer family. Now, as I
have said in a former chapter, these are wise little birds, more
interesting--I had almost said more beautiful--in their wisdom, or
wisdom-simulating instincts, than the quatzel in its resplendent green,
or the cock-of-the-rock in its vivid scarlet and orange mantle. Wrens
and mocking-birds have melody for their chief attraction, and the name
of each kind is, to our minds, also the name of a certain kind of sweet
music; we think of swifts and swallows in connection with the mysterious
migratory instinct; and humming-birds have a glittering mantle, and the
miraculous motions necessary to display its ever-changing iridescent
beauty.
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