120 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
blue over that portion wliicli, at tlie next moulting, assumes 
its splendid colors. 
There is no possibility of mistaking the males of the two 
in the nest or out of it. The bill of the green is much 
longer and coarser ; as are its shape, plumage, and color, 
than the ruby, which is one of the most fairy-like and 
graceful of all the hummers. Their habits do not seem to 
differ in any very essential particulars, but no observer, how- 
ever careless, can fail to see the marked difference between 
the two varieties when compared together, either on the 
wing or perched. The flight of the green is the more 
heavy and slow, and it seems to possess less of spirit and 
boldness than the other. The pair that returned to me the 
next spring were green humming birds, and the male of this 
pair never exhibited either the blueish blotch on the throat, 
which the ruby has when it comes from the nest, nor Avas 
there any change perceptible in the plumage at all, except 
that the white of the throat and breast had become a purer 
white, and the green of the back darker, more variable and 
brilhant. 
The nest, too, is larger by nearly one-third, and less 
elegantly finished than that of the ruby. So marked is 
the difference between the two varieties, that I can easily 
point them out on the wing in our gardens, although, hot 
only all our American naturalists have classed them as one 
species, but the great mass of interested observers are not 
yet aw^are of the differences. Now, that attention has once 
been called to the facts, they are promptly enough seen and 
recognized. Mr. Audubon gives us four humming birds, 
north of Texas — the Euby -throated, the Mangrove, the Anna, 
and the Ruffed. To this enumeration, I venture to add a 
fifth, the common or Emerald humming bird, and it is not a 
little singular that this species, which of all the rest is most 
universally diffused, should yet have not been named before. 
Of the three last named above, the first belongs to Florida, 
the other two to the Pacific coast. 
