Hummingbird Pavilion - Expo Paris 1867

The Hummingbird Pavilion is a kiosk glazed with beautiful and strong glass. The shape seems pleasant enough, but the dome of red glass is perhaps too German in taste. As for the guests of this aviary, we are still waiting for them, and I hope (let's be honest) that they never come. Have you ever closed a window and accidentally trapped a garden bird? It's a tragedy that hurts to watch. The poor little animal throws itself headlong into the glass. Fooled by the transparency of the glass, it thinks it's getting free, it collides and falls down in a daze, sometimes dead, before you can give it back the key to the field.

This is why I hope that the expected and promised hummingbirds do not arrive. Mr. Chamouillet's ice cream is of such beautiful water that it looks like sliced air.

I do not pretend to exhaust the list of curiosities and beauties scattered throughout the enclosure. Why bother? If I were complete today, I would not be tomorrow. Every day one thing is completed and another is begun; this place, to borrow a Platonic expression, is in a perpetual state of becoming.
We have not yet said anything about the fruit and vegetable gallery, very well understood by Mr. Tronchon, nor about the horticultural industry gallery, very ingeniously arranged by Mr. Arneither; nor about the Meissonnier and Marville diorama, where the most beautiful exotic plants should be shown in their natural form, size and colour; nor about the garden plans gallery (less happy); nor about the pretty Gousset cafe, a gem. There is nothing fresher, more cheerful, more rural in the latest Parisian fashion. The architect, M. Hochereau, has done many others: the grand salon d'honneur, the orchestra pavilion, M. Barillet's office. All this is of a charming taste, of a great lightness and of a very bearable expense.

©L'Exposition Universelle de 1867 Illustrée