Humming Birds

Suddenly a glint shot from the point where my gaze was dreamily focused. That was all, but suspicion and savage instincts were aronsed. For tan minutes my eyes followed tho contour of each of the small boughs 20 feetaboveme, mere twigs from a higher and greater branoh, which in turn deolined from a mighty, outstretched arm of the giant. Presently suspicion 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 theni. 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 sudden glint again struck my eye, there was a strange, tuneful hum, and - eureka! Directly above the poiut I was watching there hovered, with wings vibrating themselves iuto a misty point, an exquisite ruby throat. Then it settled on the diminutivo cup of lichen, and I had found my flrst hunmiing bird's nest. By climbing f ar up above and then crawling carefully down ou a separate limb, one could look over the nest, scarcely a yard away, to admire the tiny white eags and the even more f like nest, rnarvelously woven inside with the finest arid softest fiber, and coated on the onter periphery against the weather vrith 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 would have fitted in a circle made by joiniug the index finger and