\ : olowine fire, stretching out its gorgeous ruff, as if to emulate the sun itself in sple magic carbuncle of glowing fire, stretching Pee ame ai plendour. Towards the close of May the females were sitting, at which time the males were uncommonly quarrelsome owards , ; ree ind vigilant, darting out at me as I approached the tree, probably near the nest, looking like an angry coal c Slic ; C 5 : ; : ; ar) “1: : ‘ithin very little face, returning several times to the attack. sinkin. of brilliant fire, passing within very little of my face, gs | ; atte , sinking ani darting with the utmost velocity, at the same time uttering a curious reverberating sharp bleat, somewhat C 1S : . similar to the quivering twang of a dead twig, yet also so much like the real bleat of some small quadruped, that for some time I searched the ground instead of the air, for the actor in the scene. At other times the males were seen darting up high in the air, and whirling about each other s great anger and with much velocity. After these manceuvres the aggressor returned to the same dead twig, where for days he regularly took te station, displaying the utmost courage and angry vigilance. The angry hissing or bleating note seems something like wht’ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ sh vee, tremulously uttered as it whirls and sweeps through the air, like a musket-ball, accompanied also by something like the whirr of the Night Hawk. On the 29th of May I found a nest in a forked branch of the Nootka Bramble, Rudus nutkanus. The female was sitting on two 7 2 3 JY = Behe rm : ae : : ee eggs of the same shape and colour as those of the common species, 7° colubris. The next also was perfectly DD-~ aa oe , \ OOo similar, but somewhat deeper. As I approached, the female came hovering round the nest, and soon after, when all was still, she resumed her place contentedly.” Dr. Townsend’s note is as follows :—* Nootka Sound Humming-Bird, Zrochilus rufus, Ah-juets-Rinne, of the Chinnooks. On a clear day the male may be seen to rise to a great height in the air, and descend instantly near the earth, then mount again to the same altitude as at first, performing in the evolution the half of a large circle. During the descent it emits a strange and astonishingly loud note, which can be compared to nothing but the rubbing together of the limbs of trees during a high wind. I heard this singular note repeatedly last spring and summer, but did not then discover to what it belonged. I did not suppose it to be a bird at all, and least of alla Humming-Bird. The observer thinks it almost impossible that so small a creature can be capable of producing so much sound. I have never observed this habit upon a dull or cloudy day.” “The nest,” says Audubon, ‘which measures two inches and a quarter in height, and an inch and three quarters in breadth at the upper part, is composed externally of mosses, lichens, and a few feathers, with slender fibrous roots interwoven, and lined with fine cottony seed-down.” By many writers the Little Brown Humming-Bird of Edwards (Trochilus ruber of Linneeus) has been considered identical with the present bird, but I am at a loss to conceive how such an error could have arisen, since on examining Edwards’s figure it will at once be seen that it represents a bird of a totally different form, probably a Phaéthornis, but what species it is almost impossible to determine. The adult male has the head brown; all the upper surface and the tail, the feathers of which are of a broad lanceolate form, cinnamon-brown, with a mark of dark brown down the tip of each of the tail- feathers ; wings purple-brown ; wing-coverts bronzy brown; throat luminous orange-red; breast white, tinged with red; under surface cinnamon-brown, inclining to white on the centre of the abdomen; bill brownish black; feet brown. The above is the usual colouring, but I have occasionally seen fully adult males with the rich gorget, in which the colouring of the back was totally different, being of a pélien green, and presenting so great a contrast as almost to induce a belief that they were of a different species. ! The female has the upper surface golden green, the head brownish; the upper tail-coverts and the base of the tail-feathers rufous, the remaining portion of the tail-feathers being brownish black tipped with ‘ rufous on the sides and under tail-coverts, the throat having a roundish spot of fiery metallic red near the tip of most of the feathers: the female also differs in having the tail-feathers short and rounded at the tip instead of the broad and | The Plate represents three m white; under surface white, tinged with anceolate form of those of the male. ales and a female on the Gynoxys fragrans: all of the natural size.