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Cornugaya Directory 05
Page 07
The woods hold not such another gem as the nest of the humming-bird.
The finding of one is an event to date from. It is the next best thing
to finding an eagle's nest. I have met with but two, both by chance.
One was placed on the horizontal branch of a chestnut-tree, with a
solitary green leaf, forming a complete canopy, about an inch and a
half above it. The repeated spiteful dartings of the bird past my
ears, as I stood under the tree, caused me to suspect that I was
intruding upon some one's privacy; and following it with my eye, I
soon saw the nest, which was in process of construction. Adopting my
usual tactics of secreting myself near by, I had the satisfaction of
seeing the tiny artist at work. It was the female, unassisted by her
mate. At intervals of two or three minutes she would appear with a
small tuft of some cottony substance in her beak, dart a few times
through and around the tree, and alighting quickly in the nest arrange
the material she had brought, using her breast as a model.
You will, of course, observe that if Mrs. Bentley had sent the
snuff-box to the buttery of St. John's College instead of Trinity,
it would not have been language, for there would have been no
covenant between sayer and sayee as to what the symbol should
represent, there would have been no previously established
association of ideas in the mind of the butler of St. John's between
beer and snuff-box; the connection was artificial, arbitrary, and by
no means one of those in respect of which an impromptu bargain might
be proposed by the very symbol itself, and assented to without
previous formality by the person to whom it was presented. More
briefly, the butler of St. John's would not have been able to
understand and read it aright. It would have been a dead letter to
him--a snuff-box and not a letter; whereas to the butler of Trinity
it was a letter and not a snuff-box.
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