Gazing on these gems of the air, one would suppose that Nature had exhausted all her skill in lavishly distributing the richest profusion of colours, and in exquisitely mingling every imaginable tint and shade, to adorn these diminutive creatures, in a livery more lustrously brilliant than was ever fabricated by the loom, or metal-worker’s handicraft. [Illustration: NORTH-WESTERN HUMMINGBIRDS.] But away from the tropics and its feathered wonders, to the wild solitudes of the Rocky Mountains,—it is there I want you in imagination to wander with me, and to picture to yourself, which you can easily do if you possess a naturalist’s love of discovery, the delight I experienced when, for the first time, I saw hummingbirds up in the very regions of the ‘Ice King.’ Early in the month of May, when the sun melts down the doors of snow and ice, and sets free imprisoned nature, I was sent ahead of the astronomical party employed in making the Boundary-line to cut out a trail, and bridge any streams too deep to ford. The first impediment met with was at the Little Spokan river,—little only as compared with the Great Spokan, into which it flows. The larger stream leads from the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, and flows on to join the Columbia. It was far too deep to be crossed by any expedient short of bridging; so a bridge had to be built, an operation involving quite a week’s delay. The place chosen, and the men set to work, my leisure time was devoted to collecting. The snow still lingered in large patches about the hollows and sheltered spots. Save a modest violet or humble rock-blossom, no flower had ventured to open its petals, except the brilliant pink _Ribes_, or flowering currant, common in every English cottage-garden. Approaching a large cluster of these gay-looking bushes, my ears were greeted with a sharp thrum—a sound I knew well—from the wings of a hummingbird, as it darted past me. The name by which these birds are commonly known has arisen from the noise produced by the wings (very like the sound of a driving-belt used in machinery, although of course not nearly so loud), whilst the little creature, poised over a flower, darts its slender beak deep amidst the corolla—not to sip nectar, in my humble opinion, but to capture drowsy insect revellers, that assemble in these attractive drinking-shops, and grow tipsy on the sweets gratuitously provided for them. Soon a second whizzed by me, and others followed in rapid succession; and, when near enough to see distinctly, the bushes seemed literally to gleam with the flashing colours of swarms (I know no better word) of hummingbirds surrounding the entire clump of _Ribes_.