THE HUMMING-BIRD. 127 
Were it necessary, I could show to naturalists 
their error, in sometimes mistaking a male humming- 
bird of the first year for a full-plumaged female. I 
am fully satisfied in my own mind that the internal 
anatomy of all humming-birds is precisely the same, 
except in size; having found it the same in every 
humming-bird which I dissected in Guiana and Brazil. 
Now, as the young of the humming-birds in these 
countries require more than a week to enable them 
to fly, and as Mr. Audubon’s humming-bird differs 
not in internal anatomy from them, I see no reason 
why the young of his species should receive earlier 
powers of flying than the young of the humming-birds 
in the countries just mentioned. 
A wordon the cradle. Mr. Audubon tells us, that 
the little pieces of lichen, used in forming the nest 
of the humming-bird, “are glued together with the 
saliva of the bird.” Fiddle! The saliva of all birds 
immediately mixes with water. A single shower of 
rain would undo all the saliva-glued work on the nest 
of Mr. Audubon’s humming-bird. When our great 
master in ornithology (whose writings, according 
to Swainson, will be read when our favourite the- 
ories shall have sunk into oblivion) saw his hum- 
ming-bird fix the lichen to the nest, pray what in- 
strument did it make use of, in order to detach the 
lichen from the point of its own clammy bill and 
tongue ; to which it would be apt to adhere just as 
firmly as to the place where it was intended that it 
should permanently remain ? 
