336 PUNCTUAL ARRIVALS. 
birds did not come until the fzbes 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 
