Whether the glittering iridescent tints and singular ornaments for which this family is famous result from the cumulative process of conscious or voluntary sexual selection, as Darwin thought, or are merely the outcome of a superabundant vitality, as Dr. A. R.. Wallace so strongly maintains, is a question which science has not yet answered satisfactorily. The tendency to or habit of varying in the direction of rich colouring and beautiful or fantastic ornament, might, for all we know to the contrary, have descended to humming-birds from
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some diminutive, curiously-shaped, bright-tinted, flying reptile of arboreal habits that lived in some far-off epoch in the world's history. It is not, at all events, maintained by anyone that all birds sprang originally from one reptilian stock; and the true position of humming-birds in a natural classification has not yet been settled, for no intermediate forms exist connecting them with any other group, To the ordinary mind they appear utterly unlike all other feathered creatures, and as much entitled to stand apart as, for instance, the pigeon and ostrich families. It has been maintained by some writers that they are anatomically related to the swifts, although the differences separating the two families appear so great as almost to stagger belief in this notion. Now, however, the very latest authority on this subject, Dr. Schufeldt, has come to the conclusion that swifts are only greatly modified Passeres, and that the humming-birds should form an order by themselves.
Leaving this question, and regarding them simply with the ornithological eye that does not see far below the surface of things, when we have sufficiently admired the unique beauty and marvellous velocity of humming-birds, there is little more to be said about them. They are lovely to the eye--indescribably so; and it is not strange that Gould wrote rapturously of the time when he was at length "permitted to revel in the delight of seeing the humming-bird in a state of nature." The feeling, he wrote, which animated him with regard to these most wonderful works of creation it was impossible to describe, and could only be appreciated by those
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210 The Naturalist in La Plata.
who have made natural history a study, and who "pursue the investigations of her charming mysteries with ardour and delight." This we can understand; but to what an astonishing degree the feeling was carried in him, when, after remarking that enthusiasm and excitement with regard to most things in life become lessened and eventually deadened by time in most of us, he was able to add, "not so, however, I believe, with those who take up the study of the Family of Humming-birds!" It can only be supposed that he regarded natural history principally as a "science of dead animals--a necrology," and collected humming-birds just as others collect Roman coins, birds' eggs, old weapons, or blue china, their zeal in the pursuit and faith in its importance increasing with the growth of their treasures, until they at last come to believe that though all the enthusiasms and excitements which give a zest to the lives of other men fade and perish with time, it is not so with their particular pursuit. The more rational kind of pleasure experienced by the ornithologist in studying habits and disposition no doubt results in a great measure from the fact that the actions of the feathered people have a savour of intelligence in them. Whatever his theory or conviction about the origin of instincts may happen to be, or even if he has no convictions on the subject, it must nevertheless seem plain to him that intelligence is, after all, in most cases, the guiding principle of life, supplementing and modifying habits to bring them into closer harmony with the environment, and enlivening every day with countless little acts which result from judgment