THE HUMMING-BIRD.

strength of their quills, appear disproportioned to so small a creature; yet, on comparing them with its necessities and the other parts of its frame, their design and usefulness are evident. The food of humming

birds is derived from the sweet juices of flowers, or from insects which must be taken in a rapid flight, or drawn from the deep tube, or cup-shaped recesses, of blossoms which grow and hang in all directions, and which they can only reach by being suspended above or under them. All the parts not used during flight are very slender, and unfit for any long support, or assistance in obtaining food, by climbing or hanging in various positions, like the titmouse, and many of the slenderbilled warblers. Here, then, is one reason ming-bird. for the size and power of their wings.

Feather of

the Hum

But another is, that they may pass safely through the long flights which are necessary for their preservation; during which they have often to withstand a passing gale, a heavy shower, and even the rigour of a snowstorm. The climes they inhabit are at seasons subject to violent rains, which drench and almost inundate their abodes; or to hurricanes, which speedily leave only a wreck of what was before so luxuriant and splendid.

THE SWIFT.

The Humming-bird.

But, admirably furnished as they are for flight, they pass, before the dangerous season, to spots where a former wreck is being repaired, with a rapidity unknown in other climates.

The form of the wings of humming-birds nearly resembles those of the swift, a bird whose address and dexterity on the wing are almost beyond conception, continuing in flight in the height of summer at least sixteen hours, its movements being computed at seventy feet in a second. The front outline of the wing is very much curved, and the first quill is always longest, the others gradually shortening. The plumes are narrow and

THE FRIGATE-BIRD.

compact, firmly united together; forming, when used, a substance almost like a thin plate of whalebone. The shafts of the quills are remarkably strong and elastic in all species; but in a few they are expanded to an extraordinary degree at the base, and nearly equal the breadth of the plume.

The same arrangement is made in other instances. If short-winged birds migrate, it is to short distances. But if we turn to the frigate-bird, which is met with hundreds of leagues from land, we may discover wings prepared for extraordinary speed, and a want of that close and downy texture in the general plumage which marks a bird designed to dwell on the surface of the deep, because its province is not the water, but the air. Or to take only one more instance, the wandering albatross has been observed between six and seven hundred leagues from land, in the middle of the Southern Ocean : it is not exceeded, therefore, by any bird in the vast spread of its wing; and hence it can sail before the wind, or make way against it, as if that element were subject to its control.