1 786 THE PICARIAN BIRDS 



were, between four short black threads, meeting each other in a cross. For an 

 instant it shows in front of the flower; an instant more it steadies itself, and one 

 fancies the space between each pair of threads occupied by a gray film; 'again, 

 another instant, and, emitting a momentary flash of emerald and sapphire light, 

 it is vanishing, lessening in the distance as it shoots away, to a speck that the eye 

 cannot take note of and all this so rapidly that the word on one's lips is still un- 

 spoken, scarcely the thought in one's mind changed." Mr. Gould, who specially 

 studied the ways of humming birds during his visit to America, says that their 

 flight is unlike that of any bird he had ever seen, and quite different from what he 

 had expected in fact, exactly the opposite. When poised before any object, the 

 tremulous motion of the wings is so rapid that the eye cannot follow it, and a hazy 

 semicircle of indistinctness on each side of the bird is all that is perceptible. Their 

 actions strongly reminded him of a piece of machinery acted upon by a powerful 

 spring, and although frequent intermissions of rest are taken during the day, the 

 bird may be said to live in the air, an element in which it performs every kind of 

 evolution with the utmost ease, frequently rising perpendicularly, flying backward, 

 pirouetting or dancing off, as it were. Mr. Gosse observes that humming birds 

 have more or less the habit of pausing in the air and throwing the body into rapid 

 and odd contortions, and he noticed this especially with the long-tailed humming 

 bird, on account of the effect which such motions have on the beautiful long 

 feathers of the tail. He affirms that in these evolutions the birds are engaged in 

 catching insects in the air, and he was close enough to them to see the tiny flies, 

 and to hear the snapping of the bird's bill as it captured them. It will be noticed 

 above that Gould speaks of the capacity of humming birds for flying backward. 

 This power has frequently been doubted, and Mr. Terry observes that " the Duke 

 of Argyll lays it down that no bird can ever fly backward. He mentions the hum- 

 ming bird as appearing to do so, but maintains that in reality it falls rather thaa 

 flies, when, for instance, it comes out of a tubular flower. But, while watching the 

 motions of a humming bird, it occurred to me to test the dictum of the Duke; and, 

 unless my eyes were altogether at fault, the bird did actually fly backward. It was 

 probing, one after another, the blossoms of a petunia bed, and more than once, when 

 the flower happened to be low down, it plainly rose rather than fell as it backed 

 away from it." Mr. Ridgway likewise says that he has observed the same thing, 

 but he has noticed that the backward motion is greatly assisted by a forward flirt of 

 the expanded tail, as the bird shifts from place to place or from one part of a tree to 

 another, sometimes descending, at others ascending. " It often towers up above 

 the trees," writes the last-named author, "and then shoots off, like a little meteor, 

 at a right angle; at other times it quietly buzzes away among the flowers near the 

 ground; at one moment it is poised over a diminutive weed, at the next it is seen at 

 a distance of forty yards, whither it has vanished with the quickness of thought. 

 During the heat of the day the shady retreats beneath the trees are very frequently 

 visited; in the morning and evening the sunny banks, the verandas, and other ex- 

 posed situations are more frequently resorted to." 



Humming birds, as a rule, do not possess any kind of song, and their few 

 notes are of a twittering character. Mr. F. Stephens, describing the "feeding" 



