We will now hurry on towards their breeding place, a forest on the banks of the Green River in Kentucky, fully forty miles in length, and more than three in width. In the neighbourhood are assembled a large number of persons, with horses, waggons, guns, and ammunition; and a farmer has brought three hundred hogs to be fattened on the refuse pigeons. As the vast flight arrives at the spot, thousands are knocked down by men with long poles. Some place pots of sulphur under the trees; others are provided with torches of pine-knots; and the rest have guns. The birds continue to pour in. The fires are lighted; and a magnificent, as well as almost terrifying, sight presents itself. The pigeons arrive by thousands, alighting everywhere, one above another, till solid masses, as large as hogsheads, are formed on the branches all around. Here and there the perches give way with a crash, and falling to the ground, destroy hundreds of the birds beneath, forcing down the dense groups with which every stick is loaded. The pigeons continue coming, and it is past midnight before there is any sign of a decrease in their numbers. The ground in all directions is strewed with branches broken by the weight of the birds which have pitched on them. By sunrise, the enormous multitude have taken their departure, while wolves, foxes, and other animals who had assembled to feast on the bodies of the slain, are seen sneaking off. Audubon describes the flight of one of these almost solid masses of birds pursued by a hawk; now darting compactly in undulating and angular lines, now descending close to the earth, and with inconceivable velocity mounting perpendicularly, so as to resemble a vast column, and then wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, resembling the coils of a gigantic serpent. Their assemblages greatly surpass in numbers those of the pinnated grouse already described. HUMMING-BIRDS. A considerable number of these gem-like members of the feathered tribe make their appearance in summer, even as far north as Canada, and on the sides of the hills rising out of the "Fertile Belt," within sight of Lake Winnipeg,--a region where snow covers the ground for so many months in the year. The most common, as well as the most beautiful, species of these minute birds, is the ruby-throated humming-bird--a name given to it on account of the delicate metallic feathers which glow with ruby lustre on its throat, gleaming in the sunshine like gems of living fire. From the tip of the bill to that of the tail it measures about three and a half inches. The belly is green, and the upper part of the neck, back, and wing-coverts, are of a resplendent and varied green and gold. The breast and lower parts are white, the wings purplish-brown, and the tail partly of the same colour, with the two middle tail-feathers of vivid green.