ALLEN'S HUMMING BIRD. 



HE Humming birds, with their 

 varied beauties, constitute 

 the most remarkable feature 

 of the bird-life of America. 

 They have absolutely no representa- 

 tives in any other part of the world, 

 the Swifts being the nearest relatives 

 they have in other countries. Mr. 

 Forbes says that they abound most in 

 mountainous countries, where the sur- 

 face and productions of the soil are 

 most diversified within small areas. 

 They frequent both open and rare and 

 inaccessible places, and are often 

 found on the snowy peaks of Chim- 

 borazo as high as 16,000 feet, and in 

 the very lowest- valleys in the primeval 

 forests of Brazil, the vast palm-covered 

 districts of the deltas of the Amazon 

 and Orinoco, the fertile flats and 

 savannahs of Demarara, the luxuri- 

 ous and beautiful region of Xalapa, 

 (the realm of perpetual sunshine), and 

 other parts of Mexico. Many of the 

 highest cones of extinct aiid existing 

 volcanoes have also furnished great 

 numbers of rare species. 



These birds are found as small as 

 a bumble bee and as large as a Spar- 

 row. TJie smallest is from Jamaica, 

 the largest from Patagonia. 



Allen's Hummer is found on the 

 Pacific coast, north to British Colum- 

 bia, east to southern Arizona. 



Mr. Langille, in " Our Birds in their 

 Haunts," beautifully describes their 

 flights and manner of feeding. He 

 says "There are many birds the flight 

 of which is so rapid that the strokes of 

 their wings cannot be counted, but here 

 is a species with such nerve of wing 



that its wing strokes cannot be seen. 

 'A hazy semi-circle of indistinctness on 

 each side of the bird is all that is 

 perceptible.' Poised in the air, his 

 body nearly perpendicular, he seems to 

 hang in front of the flowers which he 

 probes so hurriedly, one after the other, 

 with his long, slender bill. That long, 

 tubular, fork-shaped tongue may be 

 sucking up the nectar from those rather 

 small cylindrical blossoms, or it may 

 be capturing tiny insects housed away 

 there. Much more like a large sphynx 

 moth hovering and humming over 

 the flowers in the dusky twilight, than 

 like a bird, appears this delicate, fairy- 

 like beauty. How the bright green of 

 the body gleams and glistens in the 

 sunlight. Each imperceptible stroke 

 of those tiny wings conforms to the 

 mechanical laws of flight in all their 

 subtle complications with an ease and 

 gracefulness that seems spiritual. Who 

 can fail to note that fine adjustment of 

 the organs of flight to aerial elasticity 

 and gravitation, by which that astonish- 

 ing bit of nervous energy can rise and 

 fall almost on the perpendicular, dart 

 from side to side, as if by magic, or, 

 assuming the horizontal position, pass 

 out of sight like a shooting star ? Is it 

 not impossible to conceive of all this 

 being done by that rational calculation' 

 which enables the rower to row, or the 

 sailor to sail his boat ? " 



" What heavenly tints in mingling radiance 



fly, 



Each rapid movement gives a different dye ; 

 Like scales of burnished gold they dazzling 



show, 

 Now sink to shade, now like a furnace glow." 



2IO 



