22 
PICARIAN BIRDS. 
supplied by as many branches of one tendon, while another serves the backwardly- 
directed first toe. The most remarkable peculiarity of the humming-birds is in 
the structure of the tongue, this organ being extensile, with its supporting bones 
carried backwards over the hinder part of the skull. 
Although adorned with such brilliant metallic colours, the 
Habits ^ 
members of this family do not display their tinselled plumage to 
any great advantage during flight; many observers having remarked how little 
of the brilliancy of the bird’s body is apparent when it is darting through the 
trees or hovering in front of a flower. This is due to the extremely rapid motions 
of a humming-bird’s wing, the beats of which are almost invisible from their 
CHIMBORAZAN HILL-STAR (f nat. size). 
rapidity. Professor Newton has well described the impression conveyed by the 
bird’s flight when he writes that, “ one is admiring the clustering stars of a scarlet 
Cordia, the snowy cornucopias of a Portlandia, or some other brilliant and 
beautiful flower, when between one’s eye and the blossoms suddenly appears a 
small, dark object, suspended, as it were, between four short black threads, meeting 
each other in a cross. For an instant it shows in front of the flower; an instant 
more it steadies itself, and one fancies the space between each pair of threads 
occupied by a grey film; again another instant, and, emitting a momentary flash 
of emerald and sapphire light, it is vanishing, lessening in the distance as it shoots 
away, to a speck that the eye cannot take note of—and all this so rapidly that the 
word on one’s lips is still unspoken, scarcely the thought in one’s mind changed.” 
Mr. Gould, who specially studied the ways of humming-birds during his visit to 
