346 THE HUMMING-BIRD. 



The name "humming-bird" is aptly given; and for the sake of per- 

 spicuity, I shall retain it throughout the whole of the family; because 

 every individual of it, from the largest to the smallest, produces the 

 humming noise whilst on the wing ; and this sound proceeds from 

 the quick vibration of the wings which are scythe-like in form, 

 and different in appearance from the wings of all other known 

 birds. 



Mr Audubon tells us that in one week the young of the ruby- 

 throated humming-bird are ready to fly. One would suppose, by 

 this, that they must be hatched with a good coating of feathers to 

 begin with. Old Dame Nature sometimes performs odd pranks. 

 We are informed that our crooked-back Dicky the Third was born 

 with teeth; and Ovid mentions the astonishingly quick growth of 

 certain men. He says, in his account of the adventures of Captain 

 Cadmus, who built Thebes, that the captain employed some men as 

 masons who had just sprung up out of the earth. I have read Mr 

 Audubon's account of the growth of the humming-bird, and I have 

 read Mr Ovid's account of the growth of Captain Cadmus's masons, 

 and both very attentively. I think the veracity of the one is as 

 apparent as the veracity of the other. What, in the name of skin and 

 feathers, I ask, has Mr Audubon found in the economy of the ruby- 

 throated humming-bird to enable him to inform Englishmen that 

 its young can fly in so short a space of time? The young of no 

 other bird that we are acquainted with, from the condor to the wren, 

 can fly when only a week old. The humming-bird, in every part of 

 its body and plumage, is quite as perfect as the eagle itself; neither 

 is it known to differ in the duration of its life from any of the 

 smaller birds of the forest which it inhabits. Like them it bursts 

 the shell in a state of nudity ; like them it is blind for some days ; 

 and like them it has to undergo the gradual process of fledging, 

 which is so slow in its operation, that I affirm, without fear of refuta- 

 tion, it cannot possibly produce, in the space of one short week, a 

 series of feathers capable of supporting the bird through the air. 

 Again the precocious flying of the young birds argues precocity of 

 feathers ; and this would authorise us to look for precocity of lustre 

 in the male. But Mr Audubon informs us that the male does not 

 receive its full brilliancy of colour until the succeeding spring ; and I 



