THE HUMMING-BIRD. 



127 



Were it necessary, I could show to naturalists 

 their error, in sometimes mistaking a male humming- 

 bird of the first year for a full-plumaged female. I 

 am fully satisfied in my own mind that the internal 

 anatomy of all humming-birds is precisely the same, 

 except in size; having found it the same in every 

 humming-bird which I dissected in Guiana andBraziL 

 Now, as the young of the humming-birds in these 

 countries require more than a week to enable them 

 to fly, and as Mr. Audubon's humming-bird differs 

 not in internal anatomy from them, I see no reason 

 why the young of his species should receive earlier 

 powers of flying t-han the young of the humming- 

 birds in the countries just mentioned. 



A word on the cradle. Mr. Audubon tells us, that 

 the little pieces of lichen, used in forming the nest 

 of the humming-bird, " are glued together with the 

 saliva of the bird." Fiddle ! The saliva of all birds 

 immediately mixes with water. A single shower of 

 rain would undo all the saliva-glued work on the nest 

 of Mr. Audubon's humming-bird. When our great 

 master in ornithology (whose writings, according 

 to Swainson, will be read when our favourite theories 

 shall have sunk into oblivion) saw his humming- 

 bird fix the lichen to the nest, pray what instrument 

 did it make use of, in order to detach the lichen 

 from the point of its own clammy bill and tongue ; 

 to which it would be apt to adhere just as firmly as 

 to the place where it was intended that it should 

 permanently remain ? 



