That was going to be the end of the chapter, but there is just something which I have forgotten. I am sure you will have been wondering why this beautiful pheasant is called the Argus Pheasant, and what the word Argus means. Well, I will give you an explanation. Argus was the name of a wonderful being--a kind of monster--who had a hundred eyes, and who lived a long time ago. But he offended the great god Jupiter, who had him killed, and then Jupiter's wife--the goddess Juno--whose servant he was, put all his eyes into the tail of the peacock--for the peacock was her favourite bird. That is one story; but another one says that she did _not_ put them _all_ there, but only the bright ones. The soft ones--those pretty ones that I have been telling you about--she put into the wings of another bird, that she liked quite as well, if not better, and that bird became, at once, the Argus Pheasant. But now if Argus had only a hundred eyes, how is it that there are two hundred, or more, in the wings of the Argus Pheasant, to say nothing of those in the tail of the peacock? That shows, _I_ think, quite clearly that he must, really, have had a great many more; and so, now, when people talk to you of Argus and his hundred eyes, you can say, "A hundred, indeed! Why, he must have had _three_ hundred at the very least." And then you can tell them why. CHAPTER XII White Egrets, "Ospreys," and Ostrich-Feathers The last bird I am going to tell you about is the White Egret. But, do you know, I am not quite sure if he is beautiful enough to be put in a book of beautiful birds, because, of course, a book of beautiful birds means a book of _the_ most beautiful birds that there are, and I am not _quite_ sure if the White Egret is so beautiful as all that. At any rate he is not so beautiful as the birds I have been telling you about, and there are many other birds in the world that I have _not_ told you about, that are more beautiful than he is. So, perhaps, you will wonder why I put him into the book at all, but I will soon give you a proper explanation of it. In the first place, if the White Egret is not one of the most beautiful birds in the world, yet, at any rate, he has some of the most beautiful feathers that any bird has, and that alone, I think, gives him a right to be here, because, you know, "fine feathers make fine birds." And, in the second place, this poor bird is so shot and killed and persecuted for these beautiful feathers of his, that, unless you were to get your mother to make that promise about him, there would soon be no such thing as a White Egret left in the world. He and his feathers would both be gone.