336 PUNCTUAL AERIVALS. 



birds did not come until the Hikes opened ; and 

 in no single instance did two whole days elapse 

 after the blossoms expanded, but Selasphorus and 

 Calliope arrived to bid them welcome. The 

 males usually preceded the females by four or 

 five days. 



The Black-throated Hummingbird arrives 

 about a week or ten days after the other two. 

 Marvellous is the instinct that guides and the 

 power that sustains these birds (not larger than 

 a good sized humblebee) over such an immense 

 tract of country ; and even more wonderful still 

 is their arrival, timed so accurately, that the 

 only flower adapted to its wants thus early in the 

 year opens its hoards, ready to supply the wan- 

 derer's necessities after so tedious a migration! 



It seems to me vastly like design, and Fore- 

 seeing Wisdom, that a shrub indigenous and 

 widely distributed should be so fashioned as to 

 produce its blossoms long before its leaves ; and 

 that this very plant alone blooms ere the snow 

 has melted off the land, and that too at the 

 exact period when hummingbirds arrive. It 

 cannot be chance, but the work of the Almighty 

 Architect who shaped them both, whose handi- 

 work we discover at every step, and of whose 

 sublime conceptions we everywhere observe the 



