Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

37

  • Thy bloomy honours. Tipt with burnish’d gold,
  • And with imperial purple crested high,
  • More gorgeous than the train of Juno’s bird,1
  • Thy bloomy honours oft the curious muse [525]
  • Hath seen transported: seen the humming bird,2
  • Whose burnish’d neck bright glows with verdant gold;
  • Least of the winged vagrants of the sky,
  • Yet dauntless as the strong-pounc’d bird of Jove;3
  • With fluttering vehemence attack thy cups, [530]

  • To rob them of their nectar’s luscious store.

  • BUT if with stones thy meagre lands are spread;
  • Be these collected, they will pay thy toil:
  • And let Vitruvius,4 aided by the line,
  • Fence thy plantations with a thick-built wall. [535]
  • On this lay cuttings of the prickly pear;5

VER. 526. seen the humming bird,] The humming bird is called Picaflore by the Spaniards, on account of its hovering over flowers, and sucking their juices, without lacerating, or even so much as discomposing their petals. Its Indian name, says Ulloa, is Guinde, though it is also known by the appellation of Rabilargo and Lizongero. By the Caribbeans it was called Collobree. It is common in all the warm parts of America. There are various species of them, all exceeding small, beautiful and bold. The crested one, though not so frequent, is yet more beautiful than the others. It is chiefly to be found in the woody parts of the mountains. Edwards6 has described a very beautiful humming bird, with a long tail, which is a native of Surinam, but which I never saw in these islands. They are easily caught in rainy weather.

VER. 536. prickly pear;] The botanical name of this plant is Opuntia; it will

  1. Juno has been associated with geese (family Anatidae) and peacocks (three species in the pheasant family Phasianidae). In Roman mythology, Juno is the principal female deity and consort of Jupiter. ↩︎

  2. Birds of the family Trochilidae. ↩︎

  3. An eagle (family Accipitridae). Jove is an alternate name for Jupiter, Roman god of thunder. ↩︎

  4. Vitruvius Pollio (1st century BCE), Roman architect. ↩︎

  5. Common name for cactus plants of the genus Opuntia, which contains over a hundred species that are distributed throughout the Americas. Also known as nopal and commonly consumed by human beings and animals as food. Opuntia was of significant interest to eighteenth-century European naturalists because some species served as food plants for the cochineal insect (Dactylopius coccus), the source of a highly prized red dye. The cochineal insect is native to tropical and subtropical Mexico and South America and was used in those places in the precolonial era to dye textiles and other objects. ↩︎

  6. George Edwards (1694-1773), English artist and ornithologist. Author of A Natural History of Uncommon Birds (1743-1751). ↩︎