BIRD CRADLES. II5 
on with the saliva of the bird, giving firmness and consistency 
to the whole as well as keeping out moisture. Within this are 
thick matted layers of the fine wings of certain flying seeds, 
closely laid together; and lastly the downy substance from the 
great mullein and from the stalks of fern lines the whole. The 
base of the nest is continued around the branch, to which it 
closely adheres; and when viewed from below appears a mere 
mossy knot or accidental protuberance.” 
I have found: but two in my lifetime, but am confident that a 
systematic search among the orchards in the glittering trail of 
the bird as he leaves the trumpet blossoms would reveal one or 
two more. For there is a strange inconsistency in the bird, 
which, in spite of its secretive art work, does not hesitate to re- 
veal it by her telltale actions, hovering about an intruder’s head 
like a sphinx-moth in the twilight, and, far from decoying one’s 
attention away from her treasure, like other birds, deliberately 
settling herself thereon in preference to alighting elsewhere—a 
conscious jewel that would seem to know its most appropriate 
setting. 
The United States is favored with but a dozen species of the 
humming-bird, only one of which is found east of the plains. 
But what glints and gleams and scintillations and spangles among 
the flowery tropics! where the hundreds of species of these sun- 
gems sport among their suggestive legion of companion orchids, 
each feathery atom with its especial whim of nest, here suspended 
among slender grasses, there hung upon a tendril or poised upon 
a leaf, or perhaps glued flat upon its swinging, drooping tip. But 
there is a choice even among diamonds, and it may be doubted 
whether even the famed tropics afford a more unique example of 
artistic refinement than this of our native Western humming-bird, 
described by Dr. Brewer, a species only recently discovered by 
Mr. Allen, whose name it bears. 
“ This nest is of a delicate cup-shape, and is made of the most 
slender branches of the hypnum mosses, each stem bound to the 
other and all firmly tied into one compact and perfect whole by 
interweavings of silky webs of spiders. Within it is finely and 
