VI TROCHILIDAE 429 
brilliant and beautiful flower, when between the blossom and 
one’s eye suddenly appears a small dark object, suspended as it 
were between four short black threads meeting each other in a 
eross. For an instant it shows in front of the flower; an instant 
more, it steadies itself, and one perceives the space between 
each pair of threads occupied by a grey film; again another 
instant, and emitting a momentary flash of emerald and sapphire 
light it is vanishing, lessening in the distance, as 1t shoots away, 
to a speck that the eye cannot take note of-—and all this so 
rapidly that the word on one’s lips 
is still unspoken, scarcely the 
thought in one’s mind changed. 
It was a bold iman or an ignorant 
one who first ventured to depict 
Humming - birds flying; but it 
cannot be denied that representa- 
tions of them in that attitude are 
often of special use to the orni- 
thologist. The peculiar action of 
this, and probably many or all 
other species of the Family, is such, 
that at times, in flying, it makes 
the wings almost meet both in ‘ ety oe, a 
: : : : 1a. 89.—Humming-bird.  Hulampis 
front and behind at each vibration. jugulards. 
Thus, when a bird chances to enter 
a room, it will generally go buzzing along the cornice; standing 
beneath where it is, one will find that the axis of the body is 
vertical, and each wing is describing a nearly perfect semicircle. 
As might be expected, the pectoral muscles are very large, indeed 
the sternum of this bird is a good deal bigger than that of the 
common Chimney Swallow (Hirundo rustica, L.). But the extra- 
ordinary rapidity with which the vibrations are effected seems to 
be chiefly caused by these powerful muscles acting on the very 
short wing-bones, which are not half the length of the same 
parts in the Swallow; and accordingly, great as this alar action 
is, and in spite of the contrary opinion entertained by Mr. Gosse 
(Nat. Sojourn in Jamaica, 240), it is yet sometimes wanting in 
power, owing, doubtless, to the disadvantageous leverage thus 
obtained; and the old authors must be credited who speak of 
cobwebs catching Humming-birds.” 
12 
X §. 
