BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



before the public and sell our photographs and, 

 now and then, amble slowly in procession around 

 the velvety tan bark. Hummingbirds, merely as 

 birds, do not exert as strong an attraction on our 

 mind as when we think of them as the smallest 

 of birds. But this is not enough. If we are to 

 get the utmost out of a half hour's consideration 

 of these marvellous little beings, we must visualize 

 them from all sorts of unexpected angles. I for 

 one am mighty glad to be living on the earth at 

 the same time with them. It is more important to 

 me to be able to see a hummingbird next year than 

 to cross the ocean in two days instead of six. The 

 present epoch might well be called the age of man 

 and hummingbirds, for both are at the maximum 

 of their evolution. What the latter lack in actual 

 size they make up in number of species, for there 

 are full five hundred different kinds. If we allow 

 only ten hummingbirds to a square mile through- 

 out even a small portion of their range, there must 

 be living with us today at least fifty millions. 



If I am to fill my tale with superlatives, let me 

 register at once a super-superlative — amazement 

 at their vitality. A hummingbird's life is one 

 burst of enthusiasm — not an unreasoning round of 

 sleepless labor like the life of an ant, but an existence 

 guided by intelligence and individual adaptation 

 worthy of the class of beings to which it belongs. 

 John the Baptist found all the necessary vitamins 

 in a diet of orthoptera and the stored-up provender 

 of other insects, but no greater miracle has ever 



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