MAY 93 



dull-colored, short-billed birds, that while 

 on the wing fed on little insects that hover 

 in the air. While their old-fashioned rela- 

 tives, the whip-poor-wills and the night- 

 hawks, flew at night, and their nearer cous- 

 ins, the chimney-swifts, skimmed and swam 

 the air after smaller flies and gnats, some- 

 where down in the tropics the ancestors of 

 the hummers learned the trick of going to 

 the flowers for the insects that gather there 

 in the search for honey. 



Whenever a hummer came to have a 

 longer bill or greater precision of wing, he 

 found a richer feast, grew stronger and 

 more active, and left behind him at his 

 death a more vigorous offspring, possibly 

 with his own superior traits accentuated. 

 Gradually, and of course quite unconscious- 

 ly to the birds, longer bills arose, and quicker 

 wings developed. As the tongue and bill 

 penetrated deeper into the corollas the birds 

 began to get the flavor of the nectar that is 

 now so dear to them. But to this day they 

 have never lost their taste for insects. I 

 have seen the hummer desert the flowers 



