The great toucan, with a beak nearly as big as his body, flew clumsily from stem to stem.
The tiny, delicate humming-birds, scarce larger than bees, fluttered from flower to flower and spray to spray, like points of brilliant green.

But they were irritable, passionate little creatures, these lovely things, and quarrelled with each other and fought like very wasps! Enormous butterflies, with wings of deep metallic blue, shot past or hovered in the air like gleams of light; and green paroquets swooped from tree to tree and chattered joyfully over their morning meal.
Well might they gaze with wonder, and smile too with extreme merriment, for monkeys stared at them from between the leaves with expressions of undisguised amazement, and bounded away shrieking and chattering in consternation, swinging from branch to branch with incredible speed, and not scrupling to use each other's tails to swing by when occasion offered.

Some were big and red and ugly,--as ugly as you can possibly imagine, with blue faces and fiercely grinning teeth; others were delicately formed and sad of countenance, as if they were for ever bewailing the loss of near and dear relations, and could by no means come at consolation; and some were small and pretty, with faces no bigger than a halfpenny.

As a general rule, it seemed to Barney, the smaller the monkey the longer the tail.
Yes, well might they gaze and gaze again in surprise and in excessive admiration; and well might Barney O'Flannagan--under the circumstances, with such sights and sounds around him, and the delightful odours of myrtle trees arid orange blossoms and the Cape jessamine stealing up his nostrils--deem himself the tenant of another world, and evince his conviction of the fact in that memorable expression--"I've woked in paradise!" But Barney began to find "paradise" not quite so comfortable as it ought to be; for when he tried to get up he found his bones pained and stiff from sleeping in damp clothes; and moreover, his face was very much swelled, owing to the myriads of mosquitoes which had supped of it during the night.
"Arrah, then, _won't_ ye be done!" he cried, angrily, giving his face a slap that killed at least two or three hundred of his tormentors.

But thousands more attacked him instantly, and he soon found out,--what every one finds out sooner or later in hot climates,--that _patience_ is one of the best remedies for mosquito bites.