Round our feet are Arums, {138c} with snow-white spadixes and hoods, one instance among many here of brilliant colour developing itself in deep shade.

But is the darkness of the forest actually as great as it seems?
Or are our eyes, accustomed to the blaze outside, unable to expand rapidly enough, and so liable to mistake for darkness air really full of light reflected downward, again and again, at every angle, from the glossy surfaces of a million leaves?
At least we may be excused; for a bat has made the same mistake, and flits past us at noonday.

And there is another--No; as it turns, a blaze of metallic azure off the upper side of the wings proves this one to be no bat, but a Morpho--a moth as big as a bat.

And what was that second larger flash of golden green, which dashed at the moth, and back to yonder branch not ten feet off?
A Jacamar {138d}--kingfisher, as they miscall her here, sitting fearless of man, with the moth in her long beak.

Her throat is snowy white, her under-parts rich red brown.