Facts on Hummiiig-B?'rds. 569 



Art. IV. Fads on Humming-Birds, their FoodL, the Manner in 

 •which they take it, and on their Habits ; with Directions Jbr pre- 

 serving the Eggs of Hurnming- Birds, and the Forms of the 

 Bodies of Spiders, and Pjip<^ and Larvce of Insects, By the 

 late Rev. Lansdown Guilding, B.A. F.L.S. &c. 



[In the collection of notes by Mr. Guilding, which we have 

 spoken of in p. 558., there are the following, in relation to 

 Professor Rennie's remarks on the " Food of the Humming- 

 bird," published in I. 371.] 



By far the greater portion of the food of the Trochilidae 

 consists of honey. I have often shot humming-birds, through 

 whose beaks, when not wounded in the throat, I have sucked 

 a teaspoonful of the purest nectar. When the fluid is hard to 

 reach, as in the flowers of the i^ibiscus 226sa sinensis, I have 

 known the calyx pushed aside or perforated ; or the tongue 

 passed along the calyx through the petals, when the corolla is 

 large and deep, or closed up by the internal organs. They 

 do sometimes, indeed, feed on soft insects ; but it must be a 

 food rarely sought for. In twelve years, I have only seen a 

 single instance of a Tiochilus poised in the centre of a dancing 

 swarm of gnats; which, for a considerable time, it continued 

 to peck at and devour, though my garden had the blossoms 

 in perfection about which it is commonly found. 



Mr. Rennie asserts that birds have little power of suction, 

 in consequence of the rigidity of the tongue : he will be sur- 

 prised to find how differently constructed is that of the 

 humming-bird. I am preparing a drawing to repiesent the 

 details of this organ (so beautiful, complex, and perfect in 

 this family) ; which I must send to the Linnaean Society, as it 

 cannot be well represented by a wood-engraving. 



The tongue is long, sublinear, and capable of considerable 

 protrusion. Its principal /r^^ portion consists of two diapha- 

 nous united tubes (fistulae vel tubi nectariferi [Mr. Guilding 

 has added, in a footnote : like the tubes in the antlia of le- 

 pidopterous insects]), pouring the nectar, by suction and 

 capillary attraction, through a common aperture (foramen 

 nectariferum), into the oesophagus. At the apex, the tubes 

 terminate in two distinct, flattened, acuminate, elastic pro- 

 cesses, cut into liplets (labrella), by which the nectar is 

 wiped up from the vegetable organs which contain it. 



It may not be improper to add here a few observations 

 which occur to me when writing of these splendid ornaments 

 of the tropical landscape. 



The spider sometimes proves an enemy to the humming- 



