THE HUMMING-BIRD. 347 



myself can affirm, from actual observation, that the additional plum- 

 age which adorns some humming-birds does not make its appearance 

 till towards the middle of the second year. 



Were it necessary, I could show to naturalists their error, in some- 

 times 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 the young 

 of 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 master in ornithology (whose writings, according to 

 Swainson, will be read when our favourite theories shall have sunk 

 into oblivion) saw his humming-bird fix the lichen to the nest, pray 

 what instrument 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 ? 



No humming-birds have ever been discovered in the old world. 

 For although both Africa and Asia contain minute birds of won- 

 derful brilliancy in the metallic colours, still the legs of all these, 

 without any exception, are sufficiently long to enable them to walk 

 on the ground. But the legs of the humming-bird are useless on 

 the ground. This I have already stated. As a distinctive mark, we 

 may say that there is a proportional length of leg in all the small 

 birds of the old world, useful when on the ground, but that, for want 

 of this proportional length of leg in the humming-birds of the new 

 world, the legs become useless when accident has brought down the 

 bird from its aerial domain. The legs, then, of all humming-birds 



