CHAPTER VII 
THE BREATH OF A BIRD 
SJHINIX of a mite of a hummingbird shooting 
southward mile after mile; his singing wings 
beginning their throbbing in the cool damp air 
of an Alaskan fall, whirring through the dry heat of des- 
erts and around the wind-eddied spurs of mountain-ranges, 
until they hum in the warm atmosphere of Mexico or 
Brazil, where tiny insects are never lacking throughout 
the winter! How exquisite an adjustment must exist 
in his organs; how mankind’s engines of locomotion are 
put to shame! The only comparison of which we can 
think is with an insect, —a sphinx-moth ora beetle, whose 
wings of gauze lift and carry their owners so easily, so 
steadily. It will be interesting to keep this similarity 
in mind, superficial though it is. 
Birds require, comparatively, a vastly greater strength 
and “wind” in traversing such a thin, unsupporting 
medium as air than animals need for terrestrial locomo- 
tion. Even more wonderful than mere flight is the per- 
formance of a bird when it springs from the ground, and 
goes circling upward higher and higher on rapidly beating 
wings, all the while pouring forth a continuous series of 
musical notes, the strength of the utterance of which 
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