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MY NEIGHBOR IN THE APPLE TREE.
NELLY HART WOODWORTH.
TROPICAL portions of the American continent, rich in an endless variety and beauty of bird-life, have shared with New England but a single species of Trochilidæ, Trochilus colubris, the ruby-throated humming bird.
This "glittering fragment of a rainbow" adds a decorative feature to our gardens, its nest so protected through diminutive size and perfect adaptation to the surroundings that it rarely comes under one's observation.
It is commonly asserted that the male is an arrant shirk, that he leaves the entire labor of building and furnishing the house as well as the heavy duties of housekeeping to the faithful mother, being in the fullest sense a silent partner either from choice or otherwise, a mere apology for a husband and head of a family.