270 Timehra. 
foliage of a gum tree, just outside my window. From time to time it sallies 
forth to visit the flowers of the garden, and thence returning well pleased and 
satisfied, plumes its feathers with its awkwardly long bill, and utters a low, 
chattering warble that sounds like the jingling of small pebbles. They may 
often be seen chasing each other with lightning speed uttering a scarcely audible 
scream. The courtship of the humming-bird is a truly interesting study. 
I hardly expected to keep my little stranger alive ; but I extemporized a cage : 
a chalk-box fitted with miniature perches and surmounted with a piece of 
perforated zinc in the shape of a gable. It soon banished all fear—this bird 
with the soul of an insect, as someone has so aptly described it—and when I 
presented a little syrup made of brown sugar and water, the tiny creature put 
out it forked tongue and drank with avidity. So it lived for several weeks 
and by then was able to make short flights about the room. But it always 
required me to put its bill into the narrow tube containing the syrup, before it 
drank. It had not the sense to help itself. One day when I was busy with 
my Mail letters, it took a higher flight than usual and disappeared through the 
open window and I saw it no more. 
This tiny bird is about four inches from the tip of its bill to the tip of its 
wings, the wings stretching out quite half an inch beyond the tail. The bill 
is fully an inch in length, and slightly curved ; and the wings from shoulder to 
tip, two and a half inches. The colour of the bird, as the name implies, is an 
emerald green with a charming bronze skimmer as the feathers catch the light. 
The chin, throat and breast are white: the short tail-feathers and primaries 
of the wing, dull black. When the wing is closed the primaries are seen to be 
graduated : the proximal feather being about one-fifth of an inch longer than 
the next, and soon. The wings, so proportionally long, are shallow ; but are 
thus perfectly adapted to the bird’s method of flight. There is no flapping of the 
wings in the humming-bird. It whirls them rapidly round like a school-boy 
doing arm exercise ; but, of course, with lightning speed. Viewed against the light 
one sees a narrow spindle, at right-angles to the body, and a blur of wing; the 
narrow spindle showing that parts of the wing in rapid succession aoe continu- 
ously opposed to the same zone of light. It is the rapid rotation of the wings that 
produces the ‘‘ hum” from which the bird has acquired its name. In short 
its manner of flight is like that of a dragon-fly, and its utility is two-fold. The 
first is obvious : it enables the bird to extract the nectar from delicate flowers 
with the least trouble to itself and without detriment to them. I discovered 
the second as I was being rowed, early one morning, along the bank of the 
Mazaruni River. A cloud of mosquitoes were dancing in a patch of light that 
streamed through the foliage of the mangrove, and in the midst was a humming- 
bird taking its breakfast at leisure. A swallow, be it observed, would have been 
obliged to fly backwards and forwards through the cloud of insects and might 
eventually have dispersed it ; a fly-catcher, to have made sallies from a perch 
taking infinite trouble to make a meal on prey so small; but my humming 
friend slowly mounted his airy stair and picked off his tiny victims as he chose. 
Needless to say, the body of the bird, like that of an insect, remains 
stationary at will, despite the rapid motion of the wings. It is well known 
