flying! When they draw it stiff and upright on its perch the picture is
honest, if ugly; the more ambitious representation is a delusion and a
mockery.

Coming to the actual colouring--the changeful tints that glow with such
intensity on the scale-like feathers, it is curious to find that Gould
seems to have thought that all difficulties here had been successfully
overcome. The "new process" he spoke so confidently about might no doubt
be used with advantage in reproducing the coarser metallic reflections
on a black plumage, such as we see in the corvine birds; but the
glittering garment of the humming-bird, like the silvery lace woven by
the Epeira, gemmed with dew and touched with rainbow-coloured light, has
never been and never can be imitated by art.

On this subject one of the latest observers of humming-birds, Mr.
Everard im Thurn, in his work on British Guiana, has the following
passage:--"Hardly more than one point of colour is in reality ever
visible in any one humming-bird at one and the same time, for each point
only shows its peculiar and glittering colour when the light falls upon
it from a particular direction. A true representation of one of these
birds would show it in somewhat sombre colours, except just at the one
point which, when the bird is in the position chosen for representation,
meets the light at the requisite angle, and that point alone should be
shown in full brilliance of colour. A flowery shrub is sometimes seen
surrounded by a cloud of humming-birds, all of one species, and each, of
course, in a different position. If someone would draw such a scene as
that, showing a different detail of colour in each bird, according to
its position, then some idea of the actual appearance of the bird might
be given to one who had never seen an example."