watching the stream and listening to its flow, we may hear the plaintive cry of the Pewee, a common but retiring bird, whose note is familiar to all. He seems to court solitude, though he has no apparent fear in the presence of man; and his singular note harmonizes with the gloominess of his retreat. He sits for the most part in the shade, catching his insect prey without any noise, but after seizing it, resuming his station. This movement is performed in the most graceful manner; and he often turns a somerset or appears to do so, if the insect at first evades his pursuit. All this is done in silence, for he is no singer. The only sound he utters beside his lament is an occasional clicking chirp. All the day, after short intervals, with a plaintive cadence he modulates the syllables pe-wee. As the male and the female can hardly be distinguished, I have not been able to determine whether this sound is uttered by both sexes or by the male only.

So plainly expressive of sadness is this remarkable note, that it is difficult to believe the little creature that utters it can be free from sorrow. Certainly he has no congeniality with the sprightly Bobolink. Why is it that two simple sounds in succession can produce an effect on the mind as intense as a solemn strain of artificial music and excite the imagination like the words of poesy? I never listen to the note of the Pewee without imagining that something is expressed by it that is beyond our ken; that it sounds in unison with some one of those infinite chords of intelligence and emotion, which in our dreamy moments bring us undefinable sensations of beauty and mystery and sorrow. Perhaps with the rest of his species, the Pewee represents the fragment of a superior race which, according to the metempsychosis, have fallen from their original high position among exalted beings; and this melancholy note is

but the partial utterance of sorrow that still lingers in their breasts after the occasion of it is forgotten!

Though a retiring bird, the Pewee is very generally known on account of his remarkable note, which is heard often in our gardens as well as in his peculiar habitats. Like the Cliff-Swallow, he builds his nest under a sheltering roof or rock, and it is often fixed upon a beam or plank under a bridge. There are no prejudices in the community against this species. They are not destroyed on any occasion. By the most ordinary observer they cannot be suspected of doing mischief in the garden. I should remark in this place, that the Flycatchers and Swallows and a few other species that enjoy immunity in our land, though multiplied to infinity, would perform only those offices which are assigned them by nature. It is a vain hope that while employed in exterminating any species of small birds their places can be supplied and their services performed by other species which are allowed to multiply to excess. The Swallow and the Pewee, with all their multitudinous families, will not perform the work of the Robin or the Woodpecker, nor can all these together do the work of the Sylvians.

WOOD-PEWEE.

We seldom ramble in a deep wood without hearing the feeble and plaintive note of the Wood-Pewee, - a bird that does not leave the forest, and is therefore less known than the larger species that builds under bridges and the eaves of old houses. The Wood-Pewee places its shallow nest upon some large branch of a tree without any protection above it, and it is chiefly concealed by the resemblance of its materials to the mosses and lichens on the bough. Its habits, except its attachment to the solitude of the wood, differ but little from those of the com

mon Pewee. It seems likewise to have the same cheerful manners. The minor notes of the two Pewees serve, more than any others equally simple, to harmonize the anthem of Nature.

THE HUMMING-BIRD.

The Humming-Birds, of which it is said there are more than four hundred species, are among the most exquisite of all animated beings. They unite the beauty and delicacy of a beautiful insect with the organization and intelligence of a creature of flesh and blood. Of all the feathered tribe, none will compare with them in the minuteness of their size. The splendor, variety, aud changeableness of their hues are no less admirable than their diminutiveness. The colors of the rainbow do not surpass those of many of the species either in beauty or variety. A brilliant metallic lustre greatly enhances all this splendor. The variability of their hues, which is also observed in many other birds, is in the Humming-Birds almost unaccountable. Says Dr. Brewer: "The sides of the fibres of each feather are of a different color from the surface, and change as seen in a front or an oblique direction; and, while living, these birds by their movements can cause their feathers to change very suddenly to different hues. Thus the Selasphorus rufus can change in a twinkling the vivid fire color of its expanded throat to a light green; and the species known as the Mexican Star, changes from a light crimson to an equally brilliant blue."

Yet with all their beauty of color, what is most attractive about them is their flight. When a Humming-Bird is flying, so rapid are the motions of its wings that it seems like the body of a bird suspended in a circle of radiating sunbeams, or like one in the midst of a globe

of down, like that which surrounds the receptacle of a ripened dandelion flower. When we watch the flight of a short-winged bird like the Quail, the radiations formed. by the rapid motions of its wings make only a semicircle. In the Humming-Bird they form a complete circle of luminous rays. This flight, which resembles that of certain insects, is the more remarkable on account of the extraordinary length of its wings, which would lead us to infer that they would be incapable of such rapid motion by the muscular force of so small a body. The wings of those moths and beetles which have a similar movement bear no proportion to the length of the Humming-Bird's wing, compared with the size of the body of the insect and of the bird. It is the rapid vibration of the wings, producing a sound like the spinning of a top, that has given to this family of birds the name by which they are designated.

While hovering before a flower, this hum is plainly audible; but when the bird darts off to another place the tone produced by these vibrations is plainly raised to a higher key, as it spins like an arrow through the air. Dr. Brewer, alluding to the Swiss philosopher Saussure, says: "On the first visit of this naturalist to a savanna in the island of Jamaica, he noticed what he at first took to be a brilliant green insect, of rapid flight, approaching him by successive alternations of movements and pauses, and rapidly gliding among and over the network of interlacing shrubs. He was surprised by the extraordinary dexterity with which it avoided the movements of his net, and yet more astonished to find, when he had captured it, that he had taken a bird and not an insect."

The largest known Humming-Bird is about the size of the Chimney-Swallow; and so great is the disparity in the size of the different species, that when confined in a cage, and the perch "has been occupied by the great

Blue-throated Humming-Bird, the diminutive Mexican Star has settled on the long beak of the former, and remained perched on it some minutes without its offering to resist the insult." Some of the species are so small that if they flew by night they might be swallowed alive by one of the smaller Owls as easily as a beetle.

The Humming-Bird was formerly supposed to feed entirely on the nectar of the flowers it was seen so constantly to visit. It is now well ascertained that its chief subsistence is made up of small insects which it takes from the flower. But the ancient opinion was not entirely a fallacy, since a portion of the nectar of the flower is taken with the insects, and supplies to the HummingBird that kind of nourishment which the larger insectivorous birds derive from fruit. Dr. Brewer says young birds feed by putting their own bills down the throats of their parents, sucking probably a prepared sustenance of nectar and fraginents of insects." The bird uses his tongue both for capturing insects and for sucking the drops of dew and nectarine juices contained in the flower.

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Notwithstanding the small size of the whole tribe of Humming-Birds, they are notoriously the most courageous and combative birds in existence. Their sharp bills, their rapid flight, the electric quickness of their manœuvres, render them so dangerous that no bird whom parties of them choose to attack can escape unharmed.

I once discovered a nest of the Humming-Bird in my own garden, upon the horizontal bough of an old appletree. It was placed near the end of the bough, about five feet from the ground. It was built, as all writers have described other nests of Humming-Birds, of ferns and mosses, with lichens glued together, perhaps from being collected while they were damp. It contained two eggs about the size of a pea-bean.