132 TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



stretching out its glorious ruff as if to emulate the sun 

 itself in splendour." The Sappho Comet, whose long 

 forked tail barred with crimson and black renders it one 

 of the most imposing of humming-birds, is abundant 

 in many parts of the Andes ; and Mr. Bonelli tells us 

 that the difficulty of shooting them is very great from 

 the extraordinary turns and evolutions they make when 

 on the wing ; at one instant darting headlong into a 

 flower, at the next describing a circle in the air with 

 such rapidity that the eye, unable to follow the move- 

 ment, loses sight of the bird until it again returns to 

 the flower which at first attracted its attention. Of the 

 little Vervain humming-bird of Jamaica, Mr. Gosse 

 writes : " I have sometimes watched with much delight 

 the evolutions of this little species at the Moringa- 

 tree. 1 When only one is present, he pursues the round of 

 the blossoms soberly enough. But if two are at the tree, 

 one will fly off, and suspend himself in the air a few 

 yards distant ; the other presently starts off to him, and 

 then, without touching each other, they mount upwards 

 with strong rushing wings, perhaps for five hundred 

 feet. They then separate, and each starts diagonally 

 towards the ground like a ball from a rifle, and wheeling 

 round comes up to the blossoms again as if it had not 

 moved away at all. The figure of the smaller humming- 

 birds on the wing, their rapidity, their wavering course, 

 and their whole manner of flight are entirely those of an 

 insect/' Mr. Bates remarks, that on the Amazons 

 during the cooler hours of the morning and from four 



1 Sometimes called the horse-radish tree. It is the Moringa pterygosperma, 

 a native of the East Indies, but commonly cultivated in Jamaica. It has 

 yellow flowers. 



