HUMMING-BIRDS. 
65 
now so named^ would have had some other appellation. Buf- 
fon and Mulsant^ from travellers^ reports and specimens^ — 
Waterton^ Gosse^ and Bourcier, from personal observation of 
living birds in their native haunts^ — all dwell with rapture on 
these gorgeous jewels of the bird- creation. Like jewels they 
are small, like precious stones they are brilliant, and like 
gems they are scattered over America. Gosse describes"^ with 
glee the Eed-throated Humming-bird, which visits even 
cold Canada in its warm summer ; while amongst the sleets 
of gloomy Patagonia, near the dismal Magellan's Straits, 
in a climate that would seem likely to appal anything less 
hardy than the albatross of the Ancient Mariner's 
rhyme, Captains King and Eitzroy have seen a humming- 
bird flying about. Pages might be extracted from the 
leaves of travellers' journals, in praise of these winged 
gems of nature," each extract fuller than the other of ec- 
stasy. For one instance, take Charles Waterton : — " See it 
darting through the air almost as quick as thought ! — now 
it is within a yard of your face ! — in an instant gone ! now 
it flutters from flower to flower, to sip the silver dew — it is 
now a ruby— now a topaz — now an emerald — now all bur- 
nished goldf!" 
* The Canadian Naturalist. f Wanderings, p. 114. 
