THE HUMMING-BIRD. 73 



colour, each of a tubular shape, and containing its 

 drop of honey. These alone afforded/' as he says, 

 " a splendid scene; but the interest was doubled, 

 by the addition of vast numbers of Humming-birds, 

 fluttering round the openings of the flowers, and 

 dipping their bills, first into one floret and then into 

 another, the sun shining bright upon their beautiful 

 plumage, giving them the appearance of, now a ruby, 

 then a topaz, then an emerald, and then all burnished 

 gold/' 



Delicate and tender as these little creatures are, 

 seeming as if they could not exist for a moment 

 beyond the confines of a sunbeam, they are, neverthe- 

 less, scattered very extensively over the whole con- 

 tinent of America; they were found in the desolate 

 regions of the south, near Cape Horn, hovering over 

 the Fuchsia blossoms at Port Famine, and even flying 

 about in snow-storms. In the north, they have been 

 seen in the still more dreary regions of Prince Wil- 

 liam's Sound, on the same parallel of latitude as the 

 Shetland Islands, to the north of Scotland; and, 

 what is even more extraordinary, they were dis- 

 covered on the snowy heights of the Orizaba moun- 

 tains, three times the height of Snowdon above 

 the level of the sea; in all these desolate situa- 

 tions, they seemed as lively as when under the 

 influence of burning sunbeams near the equator. It 

 was in one of these latter situations that Mr. Bul- 

 lock, who visited Mexico with a view to the natural 

 history of a country then scarcely known, saw how 

 ingeniously these little birds contrived to rob the 

 webs of the spiders of that country of the flies that 

 were entangled in them. They would advance 



