Sunbirds in Captivity. 163 



advantage of this mixture over the milli sop usually given is 

 that it will keep good for many days. 



In the beginning of March, 1902, the Purple Sunbird 

 began to justify his name, for specks of a metallic purple 

 colour appeared on its head and breast, and in a month it 

 was in full colour. Now, I began to let it out of its cage, 

 and it would fly about in the aviary and through a door into 

 a small greenhouse, where it used to spend its time searching 

 the plants for insects, singing merrily the while. By placing 

 the cage with the food pot in it near the bird, it was easy to 

 get it to return thereto. In the following September the 

 metallic colour began to disappear, and soon the old out-of- 

 colour plumage returned. In this condition I sent it to the 

 Crystal Palace Bird Show of November, 1902, where it was 

 awarded a first prize and a special prize of a cruet. 



In January, 1903, the full metallic colour again 

 returned, and it appeared like this at the Crystal Palace in 

 February, 1903. There it was marked " wrong class," be- 

 cause I misread the term Honeyeater to apply to birds so 

 called in a popular sense, whereas the class only included birds 

 scientifically classified as such. However it was awarded a 

 special prize, and this was a live pet monkey. I Avanted 

 to decline the animal, and several peojjle wrote to me asking 

 me to let them have it, but my little boy had seen the monkey 

 at the show, and he was most eager to have it home. So 

 home it came, and it turned out to be a female. Macaque. I 

 think the monkey hated me by the way it always showed its 

 teeth and grimaced at me when I went near it, but it loved 

 the child, and was always happy when perched on his shoulder. 

 My wife named it " Sonny," but when I pointed out that this 

 was unsuitable for a' lady monkey, we altered the name to 

 " Sunny," because it was won by a Sunbird. When I told 

 friends that I had won a monkey, they always seemed to think I 

 had won a considerable sum of money at a horse race instead 

 of a live animal. The monkey lived with us nearly two years, 

 and in the summer months was often fastened by a long chain 

 and padlock on our lawn here at Dulwich, where on several 

 occasions the too confiding sparrows allowed it to pick them up. 

 Sometimes the sparrows got off free again, for Sunny did 

 not mean any harm, but sometimes they were squeezed to 



