The species is more numerous in the tropics and but seventeen are known to frequent the United States. There are over five hundred species inhabiting North and South America and the adjacent islands, from Patagonia on the South to Alaska on the North. For of all the families of birds that are distinctively peculiar to the Americas the Trochilidæ, or the Hummingbird family, contains the larger number of species. Of all the birds that might receive the appellation, “The Bird of America,” to none could it be applied more truthfully than to the Hummingbird. Always in the air, flying from flower to flower, it shares their freshness and their splendor, lives on their nectar, and only inhabits those climates in which they are unceasingly renewed.” THE ANNA’S HUMMINGBIRDīuffon, writing of the Hummingbird, and his words do not refer to any single species, but to them as a group, says that “the emerald, the ruby and the topaz glitter in its garb, which is never soiled with the dust of earth, for, leading an aerial life, it rarely touches the turf, even for an instant.
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