Again the paradise bird fluttered off, and this time Dwight had but a line on where he had gone, for the last glimpse of him disappeared through the jungle, far off through the tree trunks. He groaned with disappointment, but he was not the boy to give up while there was a ghost of a chance left. Fixing on a tall Erythrina as the last tree past which the bird had soared, he set out as fast as possible. In perhaps half an hour he reached the tree, and, taking the range, set out again, his eyes scrutinizing the leafy foliage of the jungle roof. He had about begun to lose hope now, and, moreover, to realize that he was totally lost in the jungle, far from his companions, when a flutter of wings some distance ahead showed him his siren bird, flitting about and feeding on clusters of blue tropical berries that hung in the foliage of a high tree top that loomed up ahead. Dwight heaved a sigh of relief. The bird would surely stay there, feeding, and he had plenty of time for a careful stalk. He wormed through the jungle, and at last arrived where an aim could be had, at not more than forty yards. Raising the gun carefully, he fired, and down came his prize, at last! It was with a sort of breathless wonder that Dwight looked over the six-shafted bird of paradise as he lifted it gently out of the dense undergrowth in which it had fallen. _Why_ did nature lavish such abundant beauty on a bird destined never to be seen by eyes that could appreciate it? Human eyes, that is, for, of course, the bird would be forever a delight to the eyes of that dull-colored little mate of his whose protection demanded something less gorgeously visible. It made him feel how insignificant is man in nature’s world. Man, the animal, as exhibited by the naked savages who inhabited this forest was Nature’s own child; assuredly this bird was not so decorated to please him! Man, the intellectual, civilized man, could feel a thrill of rapture over this creature of Nature’s, admire its intense golden-orange throat scales, its rich, velvety, purple-black plumage, its crown of vivid emerald and topaz colors, with the long wire-haired plumes springing back like a coronet from its head; but Nature cared nothing for intellectual man and his mind, which was not of her doing, and she certainly did not make this bird for him! In fact, we are each one of us two people, Dwight philosophized, amusing himself with these fancies as he examined the paradise bird in his hand--man the animal, the creature of Nature, living very like the animals themselves and dependent on her, like them; and man, the intellectual, a creature of a power that is above Nature, the Being from whom sprang art, religion, philosophy, science, all the things that are above Nature and essentially antagonistic to her. But in the end Nature always has her revenge, for her jungles reclaim proud cities, as in India and Central America, or her deserts isolate them, as Athens and the Parthenon, or