ummer. But go on emptying the case."

I drew out specimen after specimen, some even more beautiful than the
first I had taken from the case, though some were far more sober in
their hues; but I had not taken out one yet from the top row. When at
last I set one of these free, with his tail quite a yard in length, my
admiration knew no bounds.

In colouring it was wonderfully like the first which I have described,
but in addition it had a golden-green crest, and the long feathers of
the tail were of the same brilliant metallic colour. It seemed to me
then--and though now I find beauties in sober hues I do not think I can
alter my opinion--one of the loveliest, I should say one of the most
magnificent, birds in creation, and when fourteen of these wonderful
creatures were laid side by side I could have stopped for hours
revelling in their beauties.

"Well, Nat," said my uncle, who quite enjoyed my thorough admiration, "I
should make quite a naturalist of you if I had you with me."

"Oh, if I could go!" I cried in an excited tone, at which he merely
laughed. "I'd give anything to see those birds alive."

"It requires some work and patience, my boy. I was a whole year in the
most inaccessible places hunting for those trogons before I got them."

"Trogons! Yes, you said they were trogons."

"_Trogon resplendens_. Those long-tailed feathers are fitly named, Nat,
for they are splendid indeed."

"Glorious!" I cried enthusiastically; and though we worked for some
time longer my help was very poor, on account of the number of times I
kept turning to the splendid trogons to examine their beauties again and
again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

MY HOPES.

It was a long task, the emptying of those cases, even to get to the end
of the birds, and I could not help thinking, as day after day crept by,
what a wonderfully patient collector my Uncle Richard must have been.
Certainly he had been away for years and had travelled thousands of
miles, but the labour to obtain all these birds, and then carefully
skin, prepare, and fill them with wool, must have been tremendous.

"And did you shoot them all, uncle?" I asked one day.

"With very few exceptions, my boy," he replied, laying down his pen for
a minute to talk. "I might have bought here and there specimens of the
natives, but they are very rough preservers of birds, and I wanted my
specimens to be as perfect as could be, as plenty of poor ones come into
this country, s