limbs as to resemble young trees:  I once ascended one of them four feet above the ground.  These produce natural arbours, rendered often still more compact by the assistance of an annual creeping plant which we call a vine, that never fails to entwine itself among their branches, and always produces a very desirable shade.  From this simple grove I have amused myself an hundred times in observing the great number of humming birds with which our country abounds:  the wild blossoms everywhere attract the attention of these birds, which like bees subsist by suction.  From this retreat I distinctly watch them in all their various attitudes; but their flight is so rapid, that you cannot distinguish the motion of their wings.  On this little bird nature has profusely lavished her most splendid colours; the most perfect azure, the most beautiful gold, the most dazzling red, are for ever in contrast, and help to embellish the plumes of his majestic head.  The richest palette of the most luxuriant painter could never invent anything to be compared to the variegated tints, with which this insect bird is arrayed.  Its bill is as long and as sharp as a coarse sewing needle; like the bee, nature has taught it to find out in the calix of flowers and blossoms, those mellifluous particles that serve it for sufficient food; and yet it seems to leave them untouched, undeprived of anything that our eyes can possibly distinguish.  When it feeds, it appears as if immovable though continually on the wing; and sometimes, from what motives I know not, it will tear and lacerate flowers into a hundred pieces:  for, strange to tell, they are the most irascible of the feathered tribe.  Where do passions find room in so diminutive a body?  They often fight with the fury of lions, until one of the combatants falls a sacrifice and dies.  When fatigued, it has often perched within a few feet of me, and on such favourable opportunities I have surveyed it with the most minute attention.  Its little eyes appear like diamonds, reflecting light on every side:  most elegantly finished in all parts it is a miniature work of our great parent; who seems to have formed it the smallest, and at the same time the most beautiful of the winged species.

As I was one day sitting solitary and pensive in my primitive arbour, my attention was engaged by a strange sort of rustling noise at some paces distant.  I looked all around without distinguishing anything, until I climbed one of my great hemp stalks; when to my astonishment, I beheld two snakes of considerable length, the one pursuing the other with great celerity through a hemp stubble field.  The aggressor was of the black kind, six feet long; the fugitive was a water snake, nearly of equal dimensions.  They soon met, and in the fury of their first encounter, they appeared in an instant firmly twisted together; and whilst their united tails beat the ground, they mutually tried with open jaws to lacerate each other.  What a fell aspect did they present! their heads were