Notices of New Books. 8427 



"Ornithologists of the present day consider the humming birds to 

 be more intimately allied to the true swifts than to any other group of 

 birds. This view of the subject is supported by the fact of the hum- 

 ming birds, like the swifts, having most ample wings, vast powers of 

 flight, and a bony structure very closely assimilating ; and this alliance 

 is still further exemplified in some parts of their nidification, the num- 

 ber and colour of the eggs, &c. It is not to be expected that, with 

 this subject before me for so many years, I should have been inattentive 

 to the consideration of the place these birds should occupy in our 

 attempts at a natural arrangement; and while I admit that they are 

 somewhat allied to the swifts, they aye so essentially distinct from these 

 and all other birds, that they might be separated into a distinct order 

 with quite as much, if not greater, propriety as the pigeons, when con- 

 sidered in relation to the gallinaceous birds. They have certain cha- 

 racters, dispositions and modes of life which are not to be noticed in any 

 other group of birds: their cylindrical bills, double-tubed tongues, enor- 

 mously developed sternums and corresponding pectoral muscles, rigid 

 primaries, the first of which is the longest, and their diminutive feet, 

 separate them from all the others. In the swifts and fissirostral birds 

 generally the sexes are alike in outward appearance ; in the humming 

 birds they are in nearly every instance totally different in their colour- 

 ing ; in the former the young assume the livery of the adult before 

 they leave the nest, while the contrary is the case with the humming 

 birds. How different, too, is the texture of the luminous feathers with 

 which they are clothed; and vastly diversified in form as the tail is 

 in the various genera, the number of feathers in the whole of them is 

 invariably ten. In their disposition they are uulike birds, and approach 

 more nearly to insects. Many of the species fearlessly approach almost 

 within reach of the hand ; and if they enter an open window, as curi- 

 osity may lead them to do, they may be chased and battled with round 

 the apartment until they fall exhausted ; and if then taken up by the 

 hand they almost immediately feed upon any sweet or pump up any fluid 

 that may be offered them, without betraying either fear or resentment 

 at their previous treatment. A Trochilus colubris, captured for me by 

 some friends at Washington, immediately afterwards partook of some 

 saccharine food that was presented to it, and in two hours it pumped 

 the fluid out of a little bottle whenever I offered it, and in this way it 

 lived with me a constant companion for several days, travelling in a 

 little thin gauzy bag distended by a slender piece of whalebone, and 

 suspended to a button of my coat. It was only necessary for me to 

 take the little bottle from my pocket to induce it to thrust its spiny 



