That thus thou flittest covertly
At this unhallowed time?
F. J. Patmore
[111]. "Her small Soul." (line 23)
Smallest of all shrill souls among the English birds is the wren, but she has a remote relative that dwells in the dark and enormous forests of South America, the Humming Bird, and simply for their own sakes I cannot resist borrowing two more fragments from Miss Phipson's Animal Lore. The first comes out of Purchas's Pilgrimes, and was written by Antonia Galvano of New Spain:
"There be certaine small birds named vicmalim, their bil is small and long. They live of the dew, and the juyce of flowers and roses. Their feathers bee small and of divers colours. They be greatly esteemed to worke gold with. They die or sleepe every yeere in the moneth of October, sitting upon a little bough in a warme and close place: they revive or wake againe in the moneth of April after that the flowers be sprung, and therefore they call them the revived birds—Vicmalim."
The second is Gonzalo Ferdinando de Oviedo's—his very name a string of gems:
" ... I have seene that one of these birds with her nest put into a paire of gold weights [scales] altogether, hath waide no more then a tomini, which are in poise 24 graines, with the feathers, without the which she would have waied somewhat less. And doubtlesse, when I consider the finenesse of the clawes and feete of these birds, I know not whereunto I may better liken them then to the little birds which the lymners of bookes are accustomed to paint on the margent of church bookes, and other bookes of divine service. Their feathers are of manie faire colours, as golden, yellow, and greene, beside other variable colours. Their beake is verie long for the proportion of their bodies, and as fine and subtile as a sowing needle. They are verie hardy, so that when they see a man clime the tree where they have their nests, they fly at his face, and strike him in the eyes, comming, going, and returning with such swiftnesse, that no man should lightly beleeve it that had not seene it...."