So, as you have seen all these pretty birds, and a good many others too--at least if you live in the country and not in London--perhaps you think that there cannot be many, or perhaps any, that are so _very_ much prettier. Ah, but do not be too sure about that. You must never think that because something is very beautiful there can be nothing still more beautiful. _You_ may not be able to imagine anything more beautiful, but that may be only because your imagination is not strong enough to do it. It may be a very good imagination in its way, better than mine perhaps, or a great many other people's, but still it is not good enough. In fact there is not one of us who has an imagination which _is_ good enough to do things like that. _We_ could never have imagined birds which are still more beautiful than those we have been talking about. Indeed we could never have imagined those that we _have_ been talking about. Only Dame Nature has been able to imagine them both. _She_ can imagine anything, and the funny thing is that as she imagines it, there it is--just as if she had cut it out with a pair of scissors. Perhaps she does do that. She is a lady--_Dame_ Nature, you know--so she would know how to use a pair of scissors. But what _her_ scissors are like and how she uses them and what sort of stuff it is that she cuts things out of, those are things which nobody knows. Only, there are the birds, not only the beautiful ones that you have seen, but a very great many others which you have never seen, and which are so very much more beautiful than the ones you have, that if you were to see those beside them, they would look quite--well no, not ugly--thrushes and blackbirds and swallows and robin-redbreasts could not look _that_--but insignificant--in comparison. Now it is about some of those birds--the very beautiful birds of all, the most beautiful ones in the whole world--that I am going to tell you; but all the while I am telling you, you must remember that they--these very beautiful birds--do not sing, whilst _our_ birds--the insignificant-looking ones--do. So you must not think poorly of our birds because their colours are plain or even dingy--I mean in comparison with these other ones--for if they have not the great beauty of plumage, they have the great beauty of song. And perhaps you would not so very much mind growing up plain, like a lark or a nightingale (which would not be so very, very plain), if you could _sing_ like a lark or a nightingale--as perhaps one day you will.