THE NATURALIST. 



ORNITHOLOGY. 



NATURAL HISTORY OF HUMMING-BIRDS. 



These beautiful and delicate beings appear to have excited the admiration of their 

 discoverers, and, indeed, of every one who has observed them, either reveling in their 

 native glades, or at rest in the more artificial display of our museums, by the spirited 

 proportions of their form, and the dazzling splendor of their plumage, 



" Delicate and beautiful, 

 Thick without burden, close as fishes' scales." 



The ancient Mexicans used their feathers for superb mantles, in the time of Monte- 

 zuma ; and the pictures, so much extolled by Cortes, were embroidered with their skins ; 

 the Indian could appreciate their loveliness, delighting to adorn his bride with gems 

 and jewelry, plucked from the starry frontlets of these beauteous forms. Every epi- 

 thet which the ingenuity of language could invent, has been employed to depict the 

 richness of their coloring ; the lustres of the topaz, of emeralds and rubies, have been 

 compared with them and applied in their names. 



These birds are nearly confined to the tropical portions of the New World, and that 

 great Archipelago of Islands, between Florida and the mouths of the Orinoco, with 

 the main land of the Southern Continent, until it passes the Tropic of Capricorn, literally 

 swarms with them. In the wild and uncultivated parts, they inhabit those forests of 

 magnificent timber, overhung with lianas, and the superb tribe of Bignonacese, the huge 

 trunks clothed with a rich drapery of parasites, whose blossoms only give way in beauty 

 to the sparkling tints of their airy tenants ; but since the cultivation of various parts of 

 the country, they abound in the gardens, arid seem to delight in society ; becoming fa- 

 miliar, and destitute of fear, hovering over one side of a shrub, while the fruit or flower 

 is plucked from that opposite. 



As we recede from the tropics, on either side, the numbers decrease, though some spe- 

 cies are found in Mexico, and others in Peru, which do not appear to exist elsewhere. 

 Mr. Bullock discovered several species at a high elevation, and consequently low tempera- 

 ture, on the lofty table lands of Mexico, and in the woods in the vicinity of the snowy 

 mountains of Orizabo ; while numerous members of this diminutive family, flung about 

 in a snow storm, near the Straits of Magellan. 



Two species, only, extend far into the northern continent of America. The ruff- 

 necked humming bird, discovered by Captain Cook in Nootka Sound ; and the Northern 

 humming-bird, so beautifully described by Wilson, has been obtained from the plains of the 



