352 THE HUMMING-BIRD. 



Authors are divided as to the exact kind of food which humming- 

 birds require. In all the species which I have inspected (and I 

 have inspected not a few), I have found insects, or fragments of 

 insects, in the oesophagus ; and occasionally, by applying my tongue 

 to the contents of the stomach, I have experienced a sweet taste, as 

 though of sugar and water. Still, were I asked if I considered that 

 the nectar in flowers constituted the principal food of humming- 

 birds, I should answer in the negative. Insects form their principal 

 food. The robust frames of these birds seem to require something 

 more solid to support life, than the nectareous dew abstracted from 

 flowers; and I don't exactly see, if these birds do principally exist 

 on this kind of nutriment, how it is that they continue to keep it 

 pure in their own hot stomachs ; and then, by a process unknown 

 to us, convey it to the stomachs of their gaping little ones. But 

 the schoolmaster has left his closet and gone abroad. Perhaps 

 he will clear away a good part of the mist which still envelops this 

 ornithological section of natural history. Let us hope for the best 



Within the tropics, we find nearly the whole of the numerous 

 family of humming-birds. The Supreme Ruler of the universe, who 

 has peremptorily ordered the sun never to transgress the boundary 

 marked out for its annual course in the everlasting highway of the 

 flaming zodiac, has equally insisted that these lovely little birds, 

 with here and there an exception, should keep in the same track 

 with the glorious luminary himself. Those exceptions which wander 

 farther on into the temperate and, possibly, Arctic regions, will not 

 stay there after the sun has reached the equator in his returning 

 journey. They belong to the torrid zone, and there alone can they 

 find their nutriment in the winter months. It is in the torrid zone, 

 then, of the new world that we are to look for the family of the 

 humming-bird in all its species, a family adorned with plumage 

 of such amazing brilliancy as to compete with, if not surpass, the 

 united splendour of our most precious stones themselves. Let the 

 young naturalist imagine blue, white, red, yellow, green, crimson, 

 lake, and purple, with all the intermediate shades, blended into each 

 other, producing a most fascinating effect, and then he will form a 

 faint idea of the transcendent beauty which adorns the plumage oi 

 these living gems. 



