INTEODTTCTIOjST. 



birds when it flies, but keeps them in a continual quick motion, 

 like bees or other insects; and, like them, makes a continued 

 humming noise as its flies. It is very quick in motion, and haunts 

 about flowers and fruit like a bee gathering honey; making many 

 addresses to its delightful objects, by visiting them on all sides, 

 and yet still keeps in motion, sometimes on one side, sometimes 

 on the other, as often rebounding a foot or two back on a 

 sudden, and as_ quickly returns again, keeping thus about one 

 flower five or six minutes or more." 



NESTS. 



The nests of these beautiful birds are built with great delicacy, 

 yet with a due regard to warmth and compactness; they vary 

 greatly in size as the species do — perhaps about half an inch 

 across the top may be taken as the smallest. The materials, of 

 course, differ greatly, according to the locality in which they are 

 built; mosses, lichens, fine grass, stalks, cotton and vegetable 

 downs of various kinds, being chiefly used; these materials are 

 glued together with the saliva or spittle of the bird. They have 

 been found composed entirely of thistle-down with the seeds 

 attached, and also of a spongy substance, like the tissue of a 

 kind of dried fungus. Part of "the materials of which their nests 

 are composed are generally wound around the stem of the tree 

 or shrub to which they are attached, so as to give them a firm 

 hold; and their texture is so close that they are not easily 

 broken by the wind. The shape is simply that of a half globe 

 or cup, except in the instance of some species, in which it assumes 

 a more lengthened form, and is suspended to the leaf of some 

 reed-like plant; in this case the entrance is near the bottom, and 

 the texture less close and compact than in most. The figure on 

 the next page exhibits the more common form and make. 



There we perceive the delicate white eggs, very small, but not 

 so much so as we might expect from the size of the bird; they 

 are two in number, as is nearly always the case — sometimes but 

 one. The period of incubation, that is, of sitting on the eggs, is 

 Very short — not more than ten or twelve days; according to 

 Audubon, the North American species hatches in ten clays," and 

 the young are ready to_ fly in a week, so that the bird's most 

 likely breed frequently in the season, and thus produce as many 

 young as those which have more numerous broods. 



Professor Kennie has alluded to the domed or covered nests 

 built by some birds, as necessary to protect them from the heat 

 and glare of the tropical sun, while sitting; but Waterton says, 

 "should the professor ever go into Gruiana, he will see in the vast 



