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The general colour of the male is bronzed green above, with a crescent-shaped white mark on the lower part of the back. It has a rich metallic blue throat, changing in certain lights; and the wings are of a dark purple-brown.
It is quite similar to Regalis, "having more orange and less red," but it is not recorded as having been found within a thousand miles of my locality. A third small species, Citheronia sepulcralis, expands only a little over three inches, is purple-brown with yellow spots; and is a rare Atlantic Coast species having been found once in Massachusetts, oftener in Georgia, never west of Pennsylvania.
Each eye-spot was in a yellow field, strongly circled with a sharp black line; then a quarter of an inch band of yellow; next a heliotrope circle of equal width; yellow again twice as wide; then a faint heliotrope line; and last a very narrow edging of white. Both wings joined the body under a covering of long, silky, purple-brown hairs.
By the shores of streams and lakes stood rows of stately cranes: the whooping crane, of large size, pure white, with black quill feathers, the crown of the head crimson scarlet and the long legs black; and the purple-brown crane, somewhat smaller in size.
Just ahead of us we see a growth of manzanitas, with their smooth purple-brown bark and pinkish white flowers in crowded clusters, standing out vividly against the background of oaks and firs, and we sink knee-deep amid the ferns and blue and yellow lupine. It seems almost sacrilegious to trample these exquisite violet-hooded flowers beneath our feet.
There could be no other building so beautiful in the world, and it was harder than ever to realize that man had created it. The golden mosaic of the domed roof, arching above the purple-brown of the alabaster walls, was like sunrise boiling over the massed clouds of a dark horizon.
The head and throat of the little creature which had excited our admiration shone with the most brilliant tints, though the rest of the body was of a more sombre hue. The upper parts of the body were of a pale, dusky green, except the wings, which were of the purple-brown tint common to humming-birds in general.
Van Busch was in the act of taking back the sardonyx signet-ring. His hand jerked again, so sharply that the ring was jerked into the air, fell to the floor, and rolled under the table. He stooped and reached for it, and asked, with his face hidden by the patriotic tablecloth: "What girl do you mean?" His dark face was purple-brown with the exertion of stooping as he rose up.
And half-way down the steep, toward the right, smoked and smouldered a shallow, saucer-shaped crater from whose broken lower rim a purple-brown serpent of comparatively recent lava descended in sluggish curves across the intense green.
In the foreground, the rows of clods shone with an oily gleam in the fading light. Farther off, the rows converged and melted into a sweep of purple-brown that narrowed as it crossed a distant rise. There were two other belts; one where white grasses broke through the harrow-torn sod, and another flat and smooth where the land-packer had rolled in the seed.
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