the earth," if this be so. But, if there be no fairies, and these be only natural forces that propel it so, is nectar, or ambrosia even, food of the substance that could give the steely toughness to those hair-spring thews, whose sharp stroke cuts a resistless way through hurricanes?

These, and a thousand such questions, thronged upon me in those innocent times, but my most eager and continued inquiries were-How did they come? Were they born so, all bright and ready? Or did they come like other birds? I could find other birds' nests and eggs, and I understood how they came; but I never could find a humming bird's

nest.

Nor could I find any one else who ever had found one. There were traditions that somebody's grandfather had heard a very old man say, that he had heard it once upon a time, from an old witch-woman, that to find a humming bird's nest, was as much a sign of good luck as reaching the end of a rainbow-that you were sure to get a heap of diamonds from it, instead of the bag of gold. Well, as I was for many a year, until I actually did stand with my feet upon the end of a rainbow, a devout believer in that same bag of gold, why should I not also have faith in that nest of diamonds?

This may seem like hazarding assertion for fact. I pledge my personal veracity for the truth of the following simple relation of an incident happening to myself. I was, when twenty years of age, passing on horseback from my native town, Hopkinsville, Ky., to a neighboring town, Clarksville, Tenn. When about half way, I was suddenly overtaken by one of those swift summer storms, peculiar to the South. I was then in the lane of a very large tobacco plantation, and knowing that I could obtain shelter in a country store near the end of it, I urged my horse into a run, and was soon there. I sprang down upon the low steps, and pushed my way through the crowd of farmers collected at the door-as people instinctively do, during a thunder storm, to witness its progress. I stood just within the door sill, where I had

obtained a footing, and held my horse's reign. The storm was of short duration-when the sun burst through the vapory clouds that lingered heavily yet, and a dozen voices exclaimed, "the rainbow! the rainbow!"

I looked up I never saw one so brilliant before-it dazzled me I felt as if it was in my eyes. By this time I had stepped down from the door-sill to the step, and naturally looking down as I did so, to my great astonishment, the rainbow laid along the ground before me, crossing the road to the fence up the rails of which it could be distinctly traced, until it again became visible up the air, forming the arc which dipped at the apparent horizon-about a mile beyond the field. I could distinctly trace that segment of the arc-which seemed to lay along the ground, and up the fence on the air, as it sprang directly from where my feet rested.

It only seemed to lie upon the ground from its perfect transparency. The near limb made itself first visible on the points of my boots, and then sprung out and up, directly in front of me--the upper rim of the segments being within a few inches of my face.

I at first thought that the unusual brilliancy and suddenness of the appearance, had dazzled my vision and confused it, but when I heard one after another of the old farmers behind me exclaiming to each other at the strangeness of the thing, I turned and asked them if they could see it on the steps, along the road, and up the fence-all answered in the affirmative, and several remarked that they could see it on my shoes. I was unwilling to be deceived, and called forward the oldest man in the company, a farmer of 68, and asked him if he could see it. He said,

"Yes-but bless God, this is the first time ever I heard in my born days, of the end of a rainbow being seen, much less of a man standing on it. And they ain't no bag of gold thar after all!" he ejaculated, in a tone that drew forth a general laugh.

The company now began to distinguish the arc upon the air, and to see that it really did not lie upon the ground, as I had at first supposed too. This was mentioned without my hinting it to them myself. I never was more surprised in my life, nor did I ever see a company of men more so than these fifteen or twenty farmers, whose whole lives had been spent in observing the phenomena of storms. No one of them had ever heard of such a thing before, nor have I ever met with any one who knew of one similar. I, however, three years after this, witnessed a somewhat similar incident, in riding through the valley of the Tennessee River, with a friend. After one of those sudden storms we saw a vivid rainbow, with its left limb resting in a corn-field, a hundred yards distant. These are facts I cannot account for, and I leave them to the learned.

Faith I did bear, and most zealously was it awakened from the first hour that my heart leaped to the soft whirr of the delicate wings of the Hummer, as it dropped suddenly upon some early spring flower, perching with half-wearied and halffrightened look as if just come to the strange earth from its long, long flight towards the north. It seemed as if it had found here the freshest footprints of the jubilant spring, and paused for love. And, now, I would think, I must watch, for spring will hold them warm within her bosom and try to hide their little nests away. Many's the hour I have fruitlessly spent in watching them wherever I could trace their flight about the gardens-for, in my simplicity, I supposed it impossible that they could have their nests anywhere but amidst the flowers-but this, along with other poetical dreams, found the fact a more practical and wiser thing.

Years passed away, leaving me still unwearied, though my continued want of success might have made me what the world calls wiser. In the meantime I had, in poring over the time-stained volumes of the famous old "Port-folio"certainly the first, if not the ablest of American periodicals

of this class-come across a most charmingly told account of the entire domestication of a family of humming birds, by a gentleman of New England, who managed to keep them for two years in his large conservatory.

He had, by the merest accident, discovered the nest in a very large and heavy woodbine honeysuckle, which hung over the window of his sitting-room, and the idea at once occurred to him of gradually enticing the old birds into the room, which opened into the conservatory, and then trans ferring thither the nest with the young. The plan, after a great deal of patient dexterity, succeeded, and this lovely little family became his inmates and friends along with the flowers. The relation of this gentleman was sufficiently pleasing to enchant me-but there was not enough of the naturalist in it to satisfy me. We had great honeysuckles too; why did they not build there as well? Hundreds of times I had searched their intricacies with patient zeal, twig by twig, tendril by tendril; and this for years--yet there were hundreds around me all day! There was something in this I did not understand.

At last, in the work of a French Naturalist of note, M. Valliant, I found the hint, that many of the smaller tropical birds, among them the Hummers, invariably built their nests, where the locality of feeding grounds rendered it possible for them to make such a selection, upon the pensile limbs of those trees that hung far over running water, as their most dreaded enemies, the monkeys and snakes, were both very cautious of venturing out upon such insecure foothold to rob. This hint I accordingly treasured, and literally haunted the brooks, the creek and river sides in the spring months, watching with the ceaseless hope of catching one of the birds in the act of alighting on the nest, which I knew was my only chance. Still I found no success for years; but, I had gained one piece of information, namely;-that at eleven o'clock, A. M., and five, P. M., if I stood still for a short time, I would see them go darting past, directly over the