There is another charm that enchants the wanderer in the American woods. In a bright day in the summer months you walk through an atmosphere of butterflies, so gaudy in hue, and so varied in form, that I often thought they looked like flowers on the wing.
Some of them are large, measuring three or four inches across the wing, but many, and those of the most beautiful, are small. Some have wings the most dainty lavender, and bodies of black; others are fawn and rose colour, and others are orange and bright blue: but pretty as they are, it is their numbers more than their beauty; and their gay, and noiseless movement through the air, crossing each other in chequered maze, that so delights the eye.
That beautiful production, the humming bird, is also the sportive inhabitant of these warm climates, and I think they surpass all the works of nature in singularity of form, splendour of colour, and variety of species.
They are found in all the West India islands and in most parts of the American continent: the smallest species does not exceed the size of some of the bees.
There are so many different kinds, and each so beautiful, that it is impossible to describe them. They are constantly on the wing, collecting insects from the blossoms of the tamarind, the orange, or any other tree that happens to be in flower: and the humming noise proceeds from the surprising velocity with which they move their wings.