"The flight of this Humming Bird from flower to flower greatly resembles that of a bee, but is so much more rapid that the latter appears a mere loiterer in comparison with him. He poises himself on wing, while he thrusts his long, slender, tubular tongue into the flowers in search of food. He sometimes enters a room by the window, examines the bouquets of flowers, and has been known to return regularly every evening for several days together. From the blossoms of the towering tulip-tree, through a thousand intermediate flowers, to those of the humble larkspur, he ranges at will and almost incessantly. About the 20th of September these birds generally retire south, and about November pass the southern boundary of the United States into Florida." "No sooner," says Audubon, "does the returning sun again introduce the vernal season, and cause millions of plants to expand their leaves and blossoms to his genial beams, than this Humming Bird is seen advancing on fairy wings, carefully visiting every flower-cup, and, like a curious florist, removing from each the injurious insects that would otherwise, ere long, cause their beauteous petals to droop and decay. Poised in the air, it is observed peeping cautiously and with sparkling eye into their innermost recesses, whilst the ethereal motion of the pinions, so rapid and so light, appears to fan and cool the flowers without injury to their fragile texture, and produces a delightful murmuring sound. Its long delicate beak enters the cup of the flower, and the protruded double tongue, delicate, sensitive, and imbued with a glutinous saliva, touches each insect in succession and draws it from its lurking-place to be instantly swallowed. All this is done in a moment, and the bird as it leaves the flower sips so small a portion of its liquid honey that the theft we may suppose is but a benefit to the flower, which is thus relieved from the attacks of its destroyers. The prairie, the fields, the orchards, and the gardens, nay, the deepest shades of the forest, are all visited in their turn, and everywhere the little bird meets with pleasure and with food. Its gorgeous throat in beauty and brilliancy baffles all description. Now it glows with a fiery hue, and again it changes to the deepest velvet-black. The upper parts of its body are of resplendent changing green, and it throws itself through the air with a swiftness and vivacity hardly conceivable; it moves from flower to flower like a gleam of light, upwards and downwards, to the right and to the left. During their migrations they pass through the air in long undulations, raising themselves for some distance at an angle of about 40°, and then falling in a curve; but the smallness of their size precludes the possibility of following them farther than fifty or sixty yards without great difficulty, even with a good glass. They do not alight on the ground, but settle on twigs and branches, where they move sideways in prettily-measured steps,