80 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 

 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 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, etc. 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 of the Kansas poet, who, in his pub- 

 lished volume, claims both the yew and the night- 



