284 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



plan to name that bird in this paper, I cannot 

 deny myself the digression. 



I had taken a friend, newly inoculated with 

 ornithological fever, down to this mountain-side 

 road to show him a black-chinned humming- 

 bird. We had seen it, to his amazement, on the 

 very mesquite where I had told him it would 

 be (" Well ! " he said, and a most eloquent 

 "well" it was, when I pointed the bird out, 

 scarcely more than a speck, as we came in sight 

 of the bush), and were driving further, when I 

 laid my hand on the reins and bade him look up. 

 There, halfway up the precipitous, broken cliff, 

 was the big, mottled, long-tailed bird, looking 

 strangely out of place to both of us, who had 

 never seen him before except in the lowlands, 

 running along the road, or dodging among clumps 

 of bushes. Then of a sudden, he began climbing, 

 and almost in no time was on the very topmost 

 stone, at the base of a stunted palo-verde. There 

 he fell to cooing (like a dove, I said, forgetting 

 at the moment that the road-runner is a kind of 

 cuckoo), and by the time he had repeated the 

 phrase three or four times we remarked that 

 before doing so he invariably lowered his head. 

 We sat and watched and listened (" There! " one 

 or the other would say, as the head was ducked) 

 for I know not how many minutes, commenting 



