140 
BLUEFIELDS RIDGE. 
at different distances, and at considerable intervals ; 
the effect of which, so unlike the ordinary voice of a 
bird, is startling until you are acquainted with the 
performers, and always charming when you are. You 
listen with the more interest, because the bird itself 
is very shy, and consequently very seldom seen ; 
ordinarily keeping with jealous suspicion in the most 
dense and sombre parts of these mountain woods. 
But there is one bird which is very abundant here. 
As the Ferns are eminently characteristic of the 
botany of this lofty elevation, so is the lovely Long- 
tailed Humming-bird {Trochilus polytmus) of its 
ornithology. The velvet crest, and emerald gorget, 
and long streaming tail-plumes of this lustrous living 
gem, flit, and flutter, and hover about this shady 
lane all day long, and all the year round ; but it is 
especially numerous in the spring, when scores, and 
even hundreds, may be seen rifling the perpetually- 
blossoming shrubs that are its denizens. To sit on a 
fallen log in the cool shadow, surrounded by beauty 
and fragrance, listening to the broken hymns of the 
Solitaires, and watching the Humming-birds that sip 
fearlessly around your head, and ever and anon come 
and peep close under the brim of your broad Panama 
hat, — as if to say, “ Who are you that come intruding 
into our peculiar domain ? ” — this is delightful. 
There is nothing to mar the charm of the situation ; 
no wild beasts in the forest behind glaring at you, 
and ready to make their fatal spring; no deadly 
reptiles coiled beneath your seat, or swinging from 
the branches of the neighbouring trees ; for Jamaica 
possesses, as far as I know, neither the one nor the 
