HUMMINGBIRDS 



until it becomes a hurricane of instinct too strong 

 to resist and they are up and away — a great army 

 of humming immigrants, forging northward, 

 through tropic latitudes, on to even the Arctic 

 zone. 



All this we know with a sort of vague certainty, 

 as a composite of hundreds of records of birds 

 seen and collected, but at best we can only faintly 

 imagine the marvel of millions of living motes, 

 sleeping each night upon millions of twigs, with 

 millions of heads under millions of wings. Each 

 morning the awakening — millions of sips of dew, 

 followed by the capture of tens of millions of 

 spiders who had thought that day to spin or leap 

 or do whatever spiders would, before their paths 

 crossed those of migrant hummingbirds. 



No person of real worth ever forgets the first 

 hummingbird he has ever seen, and if his fate has 

 cast him in cities or deep in mines or other doleful 

 hummerless places, then a certain cell in his brain 

 should always hold the thought of hopes for 

 hummingbirds. 



Soon after landing, our New England ancestors 

 found leisure for things other than Indians, furni- 

 ture and religion, and as early as 1634, William 

 Wood writes, "The Humbird is one of the wonders 

 of the Countrey, being no bigger than a Hornet, 

 yet hath all the dimensions of a Bird, as bill and 

 wings, with quills, spider-like legges, small clawes: 

 For color, she is as glorious as the Rainbow; as she 

 flies, she makes a little humming noise like a 



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