being coincident with that of the New World, the ancients were denied the exhilarating shock of delight that has been vouchsafed to their descendants when that

and their writings lack the glamour of his glossy, varying dyes; for, according to Lesson, the first mention which is made of hummingbirds in the narratives of adventurers who proceeded to America, not with the design of studying its natural productions, but for the discovery of gold, dates from 1558.

Of the name hummingbird or hum-bird, Professor Newton says its earliest use, as yet discovered, is said to be by Thomas Morton in The New England Canaan, printed in 1632, while in 1646 Sir Thomas Browne wrote: "So have all Ages conceaved, and most are still ready to swear, the Wren is the least of Birds, yet the discoveries of America, and even of our own Plantations, shewed us one farre lesse, that is the Humbird, not much exceeding a Beetle." Mr. Ridgway cites the case of Mr. Benjamin Buttivant, writing from Boston in 1697, who told of a hum-bird that he fed with honey, that was "A Prospect to many Comers."

"The earliest notice of the common Ruby-throat that I have been able to find," Mr. Ridgway continues, "is an extract from a letter written from Boston in New England, October 26, 1670, by John Winthrop, Esq., governor of Connecticut, to Francis Willoughby, Esq., and published in the philosophical Transactions." This letter reads as follows:

"I send you withal, a little Box, with a Curiosity in it, which perhaps will be counted a trifle, yet tis rarely to be met with, even here. It is the curiously contrived nest of the Hummingbird, so called from the humming noise it maketh as it flies. Tis an exceeding little Bird, and only seen in Summer, and mostly in gardens, flying from flower, sucking Honey out of the flowers as the Bee doth; as it flieth not lighting on the flower, but hovering over it, sucking with its long Bill a sweet substance. There are in the same nest two of that Bird's eggs. Whether they used to have more at once I know not. I never saw but one of these Nests before, and that was sent over formerly with some other Rarities, but the vessel miscarrying, you received them not."

Of the long bill with which it sucketh the sweet substance, the tongue is the essential feature, so fat as sustenance is concerned; consisting of a long double cylinder, "like a double-barreled gun," Goodrich thought — a most convenient instrument for imbibing nectar — flattened and sometimes barbed at the end, for the capture of the minute insects that constitute the less aesthetic portion of their nutriment — for it has been many times demonstrated that, airy and fairy as they are (the size of the stomach not exceeding the globe of the eye, and scarcely a sixth part as large as the heart, which, in turn, is remarkably large, nearly the size of the cranium), they cannot live by ambrosia alone, nor yet by love, but must vary both with an occasional relish of aphides and infinitesimal spiders.