vi TROCHILIDAE 429 



brilliant and beautiful flower, when between the blossom and 

 one's eye suddenly appears a small dark object, suspended as it 

 were between four short black threads meeting each other in a 

 cross. For an instant it shows in front of the flower ; an instant 

 more, it steadies itself, and one perceives the space between 

 each pair of threads occupied by a grey film ; again another 

 instant, and emitting a momentary flash of emerald and sapphire . 

 light it is vanishing, lessening in the distance, as it shoots away, 

 to a speck that the eye cannot take note of, and all this so 

 rapidly that the word on one's lips 

 is still unspoken, scarcely the 

 thought in one's mind changed. 

 It was a bold man or an ignorant 

 one who first ventured to depict 

 Humming - birds flying ; but it 

 cannot be denied that representa- 

 tions of them in that attitude are 

 often of special use to the orni- 

 thologist. The peculiar action of 

 this, and probably many or all 

 other species of the Family, is such, 

 that at times, in flying, it makes 

 the wings almost meet both in 



,. j i i j i -i FIG. 89. Humming-bird. Eulampis 



tront and behind at each vibration. juguiaris. xf. 



Thus, when a bird chances to enter 



a room, it will generally go buzzing along the cornice ; standing 

 beneath where it is, one will find that the axis of the body is 

 vertical, and each wing is describing a nearly perfect semicircle. 

 As might be expected, the pectoral muscles are very large, indeed 

 the sternum of this bird is a good deal bigger than that of the 

 common Chimney Swallow (Hirundo rustica, L.). But the extra- 

 ordinary rapidity with which the vibrations are effected seems to- 

 be chiefly caused by these powerful muscles acting on the very 

 short wing-bones, which are not half the length of the same 

 parts in the Swallow ; and accordingly, great as this alar action 

 is, and in spite of the contrary opinion entertained by Mr. Gosse 

 (Nat. Sojourn in Jamaica, 240), it is yet sometimes wanting in 

 power, owing, doubtless, to the disadvantageous leverage thus 

 obtained ; and the old authors must be credited who speak of 

 cobwebs catching Humming-birds." 



