22 



PICARIAN BIRDS. 



supplied by as many branches of one tendon, while another serves the backwardly- 

 directed first toe. The most remarkable peculiarity of the humming-birds is in 

 the structure of the tongue, this organ being extensile, with its supporting bones 

 carried backwards over the hinder part of the skull. 



Although adorned with such brilliant metallic colours, the 

 members of this family do not display their tinselled plumage to 

 any great advantage during flight ; many observers having remarked how little 

 of the brilliancy of the bird's body is apparent when it is darting through the 

 trees or hovering in front of a flower. This is due to the extremely rapid motions 

 of a humming-bird's wing, the beats of which are almost invisible from their 



Habits. 



CHIMBORAZAN UILL-8TAK {\ Uat. size), 



rapidity. Professor Newton has well described the impression conveyed by the 

 bird's flight when he writes that, " one is admiring the clustering stars of a scarlet 

 Cordia, the snowy cornucopias of a Portlandia, or some other brilliant and 

 beautiful flower, when between one's eye and the blossoms 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 fancies 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." 

 Mr. Gould, who specially studied the ways of humming-birds during his visit to 



