“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, some of which are little better than rubbish, and give naturalists a miserable idea of the real beauty of the birds in their native homes. But no one can tell the immense amount of labour it cost me to make this collection, as you will see, Nat, when we open this next case.”