PEPACTON 



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

 popular journals, a hummingbird's nest is shown 

 the reader, and it has blue eggs in it. A more cau- 

 tious 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 hummingbird with 

 that curious parody upon it, the hawk or sphinx 

 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 hummingbird, 

 he says, is after sunset in the summer gloaming ; 

 then it steals forth and hovers over the flowers. 

 Now, the hummingbird 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 hummingbird ; 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 



