The nests of the Humming-birds are as elegant and neat as their tiny constructors; true masterpieces of architectural instinct. Some are suspended from twigs or attached to a branch; others enjoy the shelter of some overhanging rock, and others again cling to a leaf. Spider webs are generally employed for fastening the nest to the support on which it hangs, or for interweaving the moss or the vegetable fibres used in its construction, so as to form a firm and wet-resisting mass. Soft cotton down or fine hairs line its interior, and to screen it from the piercing eye of an enemy it is frequently covered with patches of lichen, which render its external appearance as similar as possible to that of the branch on which it is placed. The nest of the Fiery Topaz, one of the most magnificent of the humming-birds, glittering in scarlet, crimson, and emerald green, is particularly curious. It is formed of a kind of tough, leathery, thick and soft fungus, like German tinder, and this apparently intractable substance the bird contrives to mould into the shape of a nest so closely resembling in colour the branch to which it clings, that it seems more like a natural excrescence than the artificial structure of a feathered architect. The Ruby-Throated Humming-bird, thus called from the feathers of its breast, which glitter as if made of burnished metal, and glow with alternate tints of ruby and orange, constructs a nest which even the Indian’s eagle glance can hardly discover, so closely does it resemble a knob upon a branch. So fearful too is the female of detection that she does not fly straight to her home, but first shoots up perpendicularly into the air until her tiny body is lost to sight, and then darts down among the branches with such meteor swiftness that the eye cannot follow her movements, and she is quietly seated in her nest before the spectator knows exactly in which direction she has gone.