HUMMINGBIRDS 



been wrought than the alchemy which can trans- 

 late spiders and wild nectar into a living atom of 

 a feathered dynamo, hurl it hither and yon through 

 hundreds of days and thousands of miles, and 

 endow it with a frenzy of courtship and a depth 

 of passion sufRcient to woo and win an unwilling 

 female ostrich, instead of merely a susceptible, 

 thimble-sized mate. 



Picture, if you please, a "comfortable, clucking 

 hen," walking toward us, with an ostrich on one 

 side and a hummingbird on the other. This is 

 improbable, but helpful. If we liken them to men 

 of corresponding height and weight, the human 

 trio would then present on the one side a giant 

 twenty-seven feet tall, weighing eleven tons, and 

 on the other a midget of nine inches, weighing in 

 at two ounces. 



The smallest bird in the world is Calypso's 

 Cuban Hummingbird, a mite whose length from 

 beak to tail-tip is barely two inches. Ulysses 

 would have had more chances of perpetual happi- 

 ness and youth if he had devoted to the study of 

 ornithology the seven years of feeble resistance to 

 the blandishments of this original nymph. Still 

 there were compensations which leave this a moot 

 question. Calypso's hummingbird weighs, all told, 

 a matter of something less than a gram, which, 

 stated more intelligibly, means that thirty or forty 

 of him could be sent for two-cents letter postage. 



One day as I was rowing lazily over a coral reef 

 close to the sand beach of Bizoton, I heard a 



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