“Art thou a bird, a bee, or butterfly? ‘Each and all three;—a bird A bee collecting sweets from bloom to bloom, A butterfly in brilliancy of plume.’” The blooms from which he collects his sweets are of the tubular flowers almost exclusively, as a mark, possibly, of his appreciation of their invention for him and at his request, as told by Albert Bigelow Paine: “The clover, said the humming-bird, Was fashioned for the bee, But ne’er a flower, as I have heard, Was ever made for me. A passing zephyr paused, and stirred Some moonlit drops of dew To earth; and for the humming-bird The honeysuckle grew.” Of his manner of hanging before his tubular flowers Goodrich says: “He poises or suspends himself on wing for the space of two or three seconds so steadily that his wings become invisible and you can plainly discern the pupil of his eye, looking round with great quickness and circumspection. The glossy green of his back and the fire of his throat, dazzling in the sun, form altogether a most interesting appearance.” This appearance Alexander Wilson pictures thus: “While richest roses though in crimson drest, Spring from the splendors of his gorgeous breast. What heavenly tints in mingling radiance fly! Each rapid movement gives a different dye; Like scales of burnished gold they dazzling show, Now sink to shade, now like a furnace glow!” It is little wonder that Buffon exclaimed, “Nature has loaded it with all the gifts of which she has only given other birds a share!” Yet Mr. Ridgway considers the Count de Buffon’s laudation as excessive because the “absence of melodious voice is, as a rule, a conspicuous deficiency of the tribe”; and in 1693 Mr. Hammersley of Coventry stated, “God, in many of his creatures, is bountiful, but not lavish, for I did observe the hummingbirds for several years, and never heard them sing.” Goldsmith says that all travelers agree that they have a little interrupted chirrup, but Labat asserts that they have a most pleasing melancholly melody in their voices, though small and proportioned to the organs that produce it. It is known that a few of the more robust species of Jamaica and Mexico warble a pigmy melody, and Mr. Gosse says that the Vervain hummingbird of Jamaica is the only one known to him that has a real song, warbling in a very weak but very sweet tone a continuous melody for ten minutes at a time. But the poet Rogers apprehended something more than is perceptible to the scientific consciousness, for he exclaims in The Voyage of Columbus: “—There quivering rise Wings that reflect the glow of evening skies! Half bird, half fly, the fairy king of flowers Reigns there, and revels through the fragrant hours; Gem full of life and joy and _song divine_!”