64 MARTIN RATTLER.

they killed the strong giants whom they embraced
so lovingly. Some of them hung from the tree-tops
like stays from the masts of a ship, and many of them
mingled their brilliant flowers so closely with the
leaves that the climbing-plants and their supporters
could not be distinguished from each other, and it
seemed as though the trees themselves had become
gigantic flowering shrubs.

Birds, too, were there in myriads—and such birds!
Their feathers were green and gold and scarlet and
yellow and blue—fresh and bright and brilliant as
the sky beneath which they were nurtured. The great
toucan, with a beak nearly as big as his body, flew
clumsily from stem to stem. The tiny, delicate
humming-birds, scarce larger than bees, fluttered from
flower to flower and spray to spray like points of
brilliant green. But they were irritable, passionate
little creatures, these lovely things, and quarrelled
with each other and fought like very wasps! Enor-
mous butterflies, with wings of deep metallic blue,
shot past or hovered in the air like gleams of light;
and green paroquets swooped from tree to tree, and
chattered joyfully over their morning meal.

Well might they gaze with wonder, and smile too
with extreme merriment, for monkeys stared at them

from between the leaves with expressions of undis-