THE HUMMING-BIRD. 127 



Were it necessary, I could show to naturalists 

 their error, in sometimes mistaking a male humming- 

 bird of the first year for a full-plumaged female. I 

 am fully satisfied in my own mind that the internal 

 anatomy of all humming-birds is precisely the same, 

 except in size ; having found it the same in every 

 humming-bird which I dissected in Guiana and Brazil. 

 Now, as the young of the humming-birds in these 

 countries require more than a week to enable them 

 to fly, and as Mr. Audubon's humming-bird differs 

 not in internal anatomy from them, I see no reason 

 why the young of his species should receive earlier 

 powers of flying than theyoungof the humming-birds 

 in the countries just mentioned. 



A word on the cradle. Mr. Audubon tells us, that 

 the little pieces of lichen, used in forming the nest 

 of the humming-bird, "are glued together with the 

 saliva of the bird." Fiddle! The saliva of all birds 

 immediately mixes with water. A single shower of 

 rain would undo all the saliva-glued work on the nest 

 of Mr. Audubon's humming-bird. When our great 

 master in ornithology (whose writings, according 

 to Swainson, will be read when our favourite the- 

 ories shall have sunk into oblivion) saw his hum- 

 ming-bird fix the lichen to the nest, pray what in- 

 strument did it make use of, in order to detach the 

 lichen from the point of its own clammy bill and 

 tongue; to which it would be apt to adhere just as 

 firmly as to the place where it was intended that it 

 should permanently remain ? 



