

LOCAL DISTRIBUTION. 49 



Thus the hot plain, the humid island, the 

 dense forest, the marsh, and the bleak mountain 

 the deep gorge, the lonely glen the extinct 

 crater, and the cultivated garden, present us 

 with their respective denizens. We might al- 

 most add, that peculiar forms of plants have 

 their attendant species; and hence it hap- 

 pens that certain of these birds abound in iso- 

 lated spots, which in a few days are utterly 

 abandoned, the blossoms which attracted them 

 having begun to fade. These visits are not as 

 some have thought capricious, but quite the con- 

 trary : for though other flowers may be in per- 

 fection, they are not what the birds delight in, 

 although to a different species they may be wel- 

 come. In fact, we have only to examine the bills, 

 some straight and long others comparatively 

 short some upturned with more or less curva- 

 ture some curved slightly downwards others 

 bent in the form of a sickle, to be assured that 

 they are modified for probing flowers of very op- 

 posite forms and character ; and the inference is 

 clear that plants attractive to one group or genus 

 will afford no inducement to the visits of another. 

 And again, even where the bills are nearly simi- 

 lar and capable of probing the same flowers ; yet 

 as the blossom of every distinct plant entertains 

 its own peculiar insect parasites, so, as one spe- 

 cies of insect or another is most relished, by any 

 given Humming-bird, will the plants furnishing 

 it be therefore visited. The Humming-bird 







