Admiration for the best qualities of W. H. Hudson it not inconsistent with a lively distaste for Rima, the bird-maiden of Green Mansions. One cannot believe in her as anything. Too avian to be human and too human to be preternatural, too unearthly to be a woman and too womanly to be a bird, she is the most striking example of the truth of Robert Hamilton's statement that the erotic element in Hudson's romances is “quite extraordinarily unconvincing.”