magic carbuncle of glowing fire, stretching out its gorgeous ruff, as if to emulate the sun itself in splendour. 

 Towards the close of May the females were sitting, at which time the males were uncommonly quarrelsome 

 and vigilant, darting out at me as I approached the tree, probably near the nest, looking like an angry coal 

 of brilliant fire, passing within very little of my face, returning several times to the attack, sinking and 

 darting with the utmost velocity, at the same time uttering a curious reverberating sharp bleat, somewhat 

 similar to the quivering twang of a dead twig, yet also so much like the real bleat of some small quadruped, 

 that for some time I searched the ground instead of the air, for the actor in the scene. At other times 

 the males were seen darting up high in the air, and whirling about each other in great anger and with much 

 velocity. After these manoeuvres the aggressor returned to the same dead twig, where for days he regularly 

 took his station, displaying the utmost courage and angry vigilance. The angry hissing or bleating note 

 seems something like tohf f f f f sh me, tremulously uttered as it whirls and sweeps through the air, like 

 a musket-ball, accompanied also by something like the whirr of the Night Hawk. On the 29th of May I 

 found a nest in a forked branch of the Nootka Bramble, Rubus nutkanus. The female was sitting on two 

 eggs of the same shape and colour as those of the common species, 1\ colubris. The next also was perfectly 

 similar, but somewhat deeper. As I approached, the female came hovering round the nest, and soon after, 

 when all was still, she resumed her place contentedly." 



Dr. Townsend's note is as follows: — "Nootka Sound Humming-Bird, TrocMlus rufas, Ah-puets-Rmne, of 

 the Chinnooks. On a clear day the male may be seen to rise to a great height in the air, and descend 

 instantly near the earth, then mount again to the same altitude as at first, performing in the evolution the 

 half of a large circle. During the descent it emits a strange and astonishingly loud note, which can be 

 compared to nothing but the rubbing together of the limbs of trees during a high wind. I heard this 

 singular note repeatedly last spring and summer, but did not then discover to what it belonged. I did not 

 suppose it to be a bird at all, and least of all a Humming-Bird, The observer thinks it almost impossible 

 that so small a creature can be capable of producing so much sound. I have never observed this habit 

 upon a dull or cloudy day." 



''The nest," says Audubon, "which measures two inches and a quarter in height, and an inch and three 

 quarters in breadth at the upper part, is composed externally of mosses, lichens, and a few feathers, with 

 slender fibrous roots interwoven, and lined with fine cottony seed-down." 



By many writers the Little Brown Humming-Bird of Edwards {TrocMlus ruber of Linn^us) has been 

 considered identical with the present bird, but 1 am at a loss to conceive how such an error could have 

 arisen, since on examining Edwards's figure it will at once be seen that it represents a bird of a totally 

 different form, probably a Phaethornis, but what species it is almost impossible to determine. 



The adult male has the head brown; all the upper surface and the tail, the feathers of which are of a 

 broad lanceolate form, cinnamon-brown, with a mark of dark brown down the tip of each of the tail- 

 feathers ; wings purple-brown ; wing-coverts bronzy brown ; throat luminous orange-red ; breast white, 

 tinged with red; under surface cinnamon-brown, inclining to white on the centre of the abdomen; bill 

 brownish black ; feet brown. 



The above is the usual colouring, but I have occasionally seen fully adult males with the rich gorget, in 

 which the colouring of the back was totally different, being of a golden green, and presenting so great a 

 contrast as almost to induce a belief that they were of a different species. 



The female has the upper surface golden green, the head brownish ; the upper tail-coverts and the base 

 of the tail-feathers rufous, the remaining portion of the tail-feathers being brownish black tipped with 

 white ; under surface white, tinged with rufous on the sides and under tail-coverts, the throat having a 

 roundish spot of fiery metallic red near the tip of most of the feathers ; the female also differs in having the 

 tail-feathers short and rounded at the tip instead of the broad and lanceolate form of those of the male. 



The Plate represents three males and a female on the Gynoocys fragrans ; all of the natural size. 



