Now, of course, as all the Hermit Humming-birds are brown, it would be no use to describe them to you, one at a time, like the others. Instead of that I will tell you about some more Humming-birds who are pretty, and who came to be what they are like now in some curious way or other, which had nothing to do with their having once been sunbeams. One of these is the Snow-cap. He is very small, almost as small as the smallest of the Humming-birds--and you know how small that is--and although he is not exactly brown, still he is not at all a brilliant bird for a Humming-bird. What makes him so pretty is this. First, all the whole crown of his head is of a beautiful, pure, silky white, which makes it look as if a large, soft snowflake had fallen upon it, and then, when he spreads out his tail like a fan--which you may be sure he knows how to do--there are two white patches upon it as well, which look like two smaller snowflakes. It is not many Humming-birds who are ornamented in _that_ way. How did this one get those white patches, and are they really snowflakes that fell upon him? You shall hear. Once they were not white at all, those patches, but coloured with all the colours of the rainbow, and more brilliant than anything you could possibly think of, more brilliant even than any other colour that is upon any other Humming-bird. Indeed they were _so_ brilliant that no one could look at them, and that made the Humming-bird very proud indeed. "Could my rivals have looked at me," he said, "they would never have confessed my superiority, however plainly they must have seen it. Not to be able to look at me is, in itself, a confession. They are dazzled, and well they may be, for to look at me is like looking at the sun himself. Surely there is no earthly brightness that I do not outshine." And as the proud bird said this, he looked up, and there, far above him in the blue dome of the sky, were the snows of the mighty mountain Chimborazo, and in their white, dazzling purity they seemed even brighter than himself. But instead of being humbled, the Humming-bird only felt insulted, and resolved to do something decisive. "I will thaw those white robes of his," he said; "my brightness shall burn them away, and there shall be no more snow in the world." He was just a little larger than a humble-bee.