Humming Birds

Snddenly a glint shot from the point where my gaze was dreainily fooused. That was all, but suspicion and savage instincts were aroused. For tan minutes my eyes followed the contour of each of the small bonghs 20 feet above me, mere twigs from a higher and greater branch, whioh in turn declined from a mighty, outstretched arm of the giant. Presently suspioion centered in an insignificant, lichen covered wart on the upper side of a branch as large, perhaps, as a lady's wrist. It was like a dozen others, yet not exactly like them. The lichen seemed to me just a shade grayer and more regular, and the knot was a trifle too round. I feared to take my eyes away, lest it were lost before I had proved it to be only a natural excrescence. The suelden glint again struck my eye, there was a strange, tunefnl hum, and - eureka! Directly above the point I was watching there hovered, with wings Tibrating tuemselves into a misty point, an exquisite ruby throat. Then it settled on the diminutive cup of lichen, and I had found my flrst hnmming bird's nest. By climbing f ar up above and then crawling carefully down on a separate lirub, one could look over the nest, scarcely a yard away, to admire the tiny white eggs and the even more f airylike nest, marvelously woven inside with the finest and softest fiber, and coated on the onter periphery against the weather with delicate lichen, which just turned the rim so as to shed any insistent raindrop that might penétrate the manifold roof of leaves overhead. The whole wonld have fitted in a circle made by joining the index finger and