94 NATURE AND THE POETS. 



In a poem by a well-known author in one of the 

 popular journals, a humming-bird's nest is shown the 

 reader, and it has blue eggs in it. A more cautious 

 poet would have turned to Audubon or Wilson before 

 venturing upon such a statement. But then it was 

 necessary to have a word to rhyme with " view," 

 and what could be easier than to make a white egg 

 " blue " ? Again, one of our later poets has evidently 

 confounded the humming-bird with that curious par- 

 ody upon it, the hawk or sphynx moth, as in his 

 poem upon the subject he has hit off exactly the 

 habits of the moth, or, rather, his creature seems a 

 cross between the moth and the bird, as it has the 

 habits of the one and the plumage of the other. The 

 time to see the humming-bird, he says, is after sunset 

 in the summer gloaming ; then it steals forth and 

 hovers over the flowers, etc. Now, the humming-bird 

 is eminently a creature of the sun and of the broad 

 open day, and I have never seen it after sundown, 

 while the moth is rarely seen except at twilight. It 

 is much smaller and less brilliant than the humming- 

 bird; but its flight and motions are so nearly the 

 same that a poet with his eye in a fine frenzy rolling 

 might easily mistake one for the other. It is but a 

 small slip in such a poet as poor George Arnold, 

 when he makes the sweet-scented honeysuckle bloom 

 for the bee, for surely the name suggests the bee, 

 though in fact she does not work upon it ; but what 

 shall we say of the Kansas poet, who, in his published 

 volume, claims both the yew and the nightingale foi 



