184 Birds Every Child Should Know 



bird we have. Suppose a fairy wished to 

 pluck one for her dinner, as we shoiild pluck a 

 chicken; how large, do you think, would be 

 the actual body of a hummingbird, without 

 its feathers? Not much, if any, larger than 

 a big bumble-bee, I venture to guess. Yet 

 this atom of animation travels from Panama 

 to Quebec or beyond, and back again every 

 year of its brief life, that it may live where 

 flowers, and the minute insects that infest them, 

 will furnish drink and meat the year around. 

 So small a speck of a traveller cannot be seen 

 in the sky by an enemy with the sharpest of 

 eyes. Space quickly swallows it. A second 

 after it has left your garden it will be out of 

 sight. This mite of a migrant has plenty 

 of stay-at-home relatives in the tropics — ex- 

 quisite creatures they are — ^but the ruby-throat 

 is the only hummingbird bold enough to venture 

 into the eastern United States and Canada. 



What tempts him so far north? You know 

 that certain flowers depend upon certain insect 

 friends to carry their pollen from blossom to 

 blossom that they may set fertile seed ; but did 

 you know that certain other flowers depend 

 upon the hummingbird ? Only his tongue, 

 that may be run oi\t beyond his long, slender 

 bill and turned around curves, could reach the 

 drops of nectar in the tips of the wild colum- 

 bine's five inverted horns of plenty. The 



