Flumming-Lirds. 209 
some diminutive, curiously-shaped, bright-tinted, 
flying reptile of arboreal habits that lived in some 
far-off epoch in the world’s history. It is not, at 
all events, maintained by anyone that all birds 
sprang originally from one reptilian stock; and the 
true position of hummineg-birds in a natural classi- 
fication has not vet been settled, for no intermediate 
forms exist connecting them with any other group. 
To the ordinary mind they appear utterly unlike all 
other feathered creatures, and as much entitled to 
stand apart as, for instance, the pigeon and ostrich 
families. It has been maintained by some writers 
that they are anatomically related to the swifts, 
although the differences separating the two families 
appear so great as almost to stagger belief in this 
notion. Now, however, the very latest authority 
on this subject, Dr. Schufeldt, has come to the 
conclusion that swifts are only greatly modified 
Passeres, and that the humming-birds should form 
an order by themselves. 
Leaving this question, and regarding them simply 
with the ornithological eye that does not see far 
below the surface of things, when we have sufficiently 
admired the unique beauty and marvellous velocity 
of humming-birds, there is little more to be said 
about them. They are lovely to the eye—in- 
describably so ; and it is not strange that Gould 
wrote rapturously of the time when he was at length 
‘permitted to revel in the delight of seeing the 
humming-bird in a state of nature.” ‘The feeling, 
he wrote, which animated him with regard to these 
most wonderful works of creation it was impossible 
to describe, and could only be appreciated by those 
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