214 The Naturalist in La Plata.
not proceed in that methodical manner which bees follow, taking the flowers seriatim, but skip about from one part of a tree to another in the most capricious manner." I have observed humble-bees a great deal, and feel convinced that they arc among the most highly intelligent of the social hymenoptera. Humming-birds, to my mind, have a much closer resemblance to the solitary wood-boring bees and to dragon-flies. It must also be borne in mind that insects have very little time in which to acquire experience, and that a large portion of their life, in the imago state, is taken up with the complex business of reproduction.
The Trochilidae, although confined to one continent, promise to exceed all other families--even the cosmopolitan finches and warblers--in number of species. At present over five hundred are known, or as many as all the species of birds in Europe together; and good reasons exist for believing that very many more--not less perhaps than one or two hundred species--yet remain to be discovered. The most prolific region, and where humming-birds are most highly developed, is known to be West Brazil and the eastern slopes of the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes. This is precisely the least known portion of South America; the few naturalists and collectors who have reached it have returned laden with spoil, to tell us of a region surpassing all others in the superabundance and beauty of its bird life. Nothing, however, which can be said concerning these vast unexplored areas of tropical mountain and forest so forcibly impresses us with the idea of the unknown riches
Humming- Birds.
215
contained in them as the story of the Loddigesia mirabilis. This is perhaps the most wonderful humming-bird known, and no one who had not previously seen it figured could possibly form an idea of what it is like from a mere description. An outline sketch of it would probably be taken by most people as a fantastic design representing a
Loddigesia Mirabilis,
bird-form in combination with leaves, in size and shape resembling poplar leaves, but on leaf-stalks of an impossible length, curving and crossing each other so as to form geometrical figures unlike anything in nature. Yet this bird (a single specimen) was obtained in Peru half a century ago, and for upwards of twenty years after its discovery