SOME TENNESSEE BIRD NOTES. 193 



mistook it for a scarlet flower. I did not 

 " wipe my eye," not being a poet, nor even 

 a " rash gazer," but I admired anew the 

 wonderful flashing jewel, now coal-black, 

 now flaming red, with which, perhaps, the 

 male ruby-throat blinds his long-suffering 

 mate to all his shameful treatment of her 

 in her season of watchfulness and motherly 

 anxiety. Does she never remind him, I 

 wonder, that there are some things whose 

 price is far above rubies? I had never 

 seen the humming-bird so much a forest- 

 dweller as here, and gladly confessed that 

 I had never seen him when he looked so 

 romantically at home and in place. The 

 tulip-trees, in particular, might have been 

 made on purpose for him. 



As the Chattanooga neighborhood was 

 poorly supplied with hawks, woodpeckers, 

 and swallows, so was it likewise with spar- 

 rows, though in a less marked degree. The 

 common species — the only resident species 

 that I met with, but my explorations were 

 nothing like complete — were chippers, field 

 sparrows, and Bachman sparrows ; the first 

 interesting for their familiarity, the other 

 two for their musical gifts. In a compari- 



