Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/236

Minute Calliope, on the other hand, prefers rocky hill-sides a great altitudes, where only the Pinus contorta, rock plants, and an alpine flora, "struggle for existence." I have frequently killed this bird above the line of perpetual snow. Its favourite resting-place is on the extreme point of a dead pine-tree, where, if undisturbed, it will sit for hours. The site chosen for the nest is usually the branch of a young pine; artfully concealed amidst the fronds at the very end, it is rocked like a cradle by every passing breeze.

The Black-throated Humming-bird lingers around lakes, pools, and swamps, where its favourite trapping tree grows. I have occasionally, though very rarely, seen it hovering over flowers; this, I apprehend, is only when the storehouse is empty, and the sap too dry to capture the insects. They generally build in the Birch or Alder, selecting the fork of a branch high up.

All humming-birds, as far as I know, lay only two eggs; the young are so tightly packed into the nest, and fit it so exactly, that if once taken out it is quite impossible to replace them. Several springs succeeding my first discovery that these humming-birds were regular migrants to boreal regions, I watched their arrival. We were quartered for the winter close to the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and the winters here vary in length, as well as depth of snow and intensity of cold; 33° below zero being no infrequent register; but it did not matter whether we had a late or an early spring, the hummingbirds never came until the Ribes opened, and in no single instance did two whole days elapse after the blossoms expanded but Selasphorus and Calliope arrived to bid them welcome. The males usually preceded the females by four or five days.

The Black-throated Humming-bird arrives about a week or ten days after the other two. Marvellous is the instinct that guides, and the power that sustains these birds (not larger than a good-sized humble-bee) over such an immense tract of country; and even more wonderful still is their arrival, timed so accurately, that the only flower adapted to its wants thus early in the year, opens its hoards ready to supply the wanderers' necessities after so tedious a migration. It seems to me vastly like design, and foreseeing wisdom, that a shrub, indigenous and widely distributed, should be so fashioned as to produce its blossoms long before its leaves; and that this very plant alone blooms ere the snow has melted off the land, and that too at the exact period when hummingbirds arrive. It cannot be chance, but the work of the Almighty architect, who shaped them both, whose handiwork we discover at every step, and of whose sublime conceptions we everywhere observe the manifestations in the admirably-balanced system of creation.

The specific characters of these three species, whose northern range I believe was first defined by myself, are briefly:—

Selasphorus rufus (the Nootka or Red-backed Humming-bird).—Sp. ch.: Male,—tail strong and wedge-shaped upper parts, lower tail-coverts, and back, cinnamon; throat coppery red, with a well-developed ruff of the same, bordered with a while collar; tail-feathers cinnamon, striped with purplish-brown. Female,—plain; cinnamon on the back, replaced with green; traces only of metallic feathers on the throat. Length of male, 3.50; wing, 1.56; tail, 1.31. Hab.—West coast of North America to lat. 53° N., extending its range southward over the Gulf of California, to the Rio Grande.

Trochilus Calliope.—Sp. ch.: Male,—back bright green; wings brownish; neck with a ruff of pinnated magenta-coloured feathers, the lower ones much elongated; abdomen whitish; length about 2.75. Female,—much plainer than the male, will only a trace of the magenta-coloured ruff.

Trochilus Alexandri (Black-throated Humming-bird).—Male,—tail slightly forked; the chin and upper part of the throat velvety black, without metallic reflexions, which are confined to the posterior border of the black, and are violet, changing to steel-blue. Length 3.30. Female,—without the metallic markings; tail-feathers tipped with white. Both have the same northern and southern range us Sel. rufus.

Blue Fleabane in Cumberland.—I believe I have made a little discovery; and take the liberty of sending an account of it, requesting the favour of insertion. The discovery I allude to is a habitat for Erigeron acre as a Cumberland plant. I am aware that it has been described before as belonging to this county. Wilson, of Kendal (1744), mentions it in his "Synopsis." Jenkinson (1775) also mentions it in his "Description of British Pants;" but neither of these gives any locality. In the "Cybele" it is said to grow in the "Lake district;" but as this includes Cumberland, Westmoreland, and part of Lancashire, it leaves the locality still indefinite. It is not mentioned by Withering, nor in Miss Martineau's useful little "Guide to the Lakes." I have consulted some of our most observant botanists, and they do not know it as a Cumberland plant. I think, therefore, I may fairly claim it as a discovery. I found it growing in considerable quantity on a gravelly bank of the river Coldew, a few miles from Carlisle. It would not be prudent to indicate the exact spot, as the rapacity of collectors, I fear, would soon eradicate little protégé. Our rare plants are becoming still more rare. I wish every botanist would inscribe on his vasculum, "Woodman, spare that tree."—Wood Robert.