Recently published Ornithological Works. G29 



The third paper coataius the names o£ twenty-four spcoit's 

 of birds collected in the Kasai Province of the Belgian 

 Congo by a mining engineer, A. Crida, and sent to the 

 Genoa Museum. No new species are described. 



Miss Sherman on Feeding Humming-birds, 



[Experiments in feeding Hiimmiug-birds during seven summers. By 

 Althea II. Siierman. Smithsonian lleport, Washington, for 1913-1914, 

 pp. 469-468.] 



In this paper Miss Sherman gives a most interesting 

 account of a long series of feeding experiments with 

 wild uncaged Ruby-throated Humming-birds (Archilochus 

 colubris) at her home in Iowa. 



Artificial flowers, such as nasturtiums or tiger lilies, with 

 a bottle attached filled with granulated sugar dissolved in 

 water, were fixed at different positions in the garden or 

 " yard," and were for many successive summers visited by 

 the Humming-birds, 



Among the many interesting results noticed was that the 

 birds, when they had learnt about the artificial flowers and 

 their supply of syrup, neglected all the real flowers in the 

 garden. It is believed that the birds which did occasionally 

 visit the real flowers w^ere all migrants, and that the same 

 breeding individuals returned to the garden year after year. 

 The birds usually arrived in May but did not become 

 " regular boarders " until July. Miss Sherman believes 

 that during June they were busy with their incubation 

 duties, some two or three miles away in the woods. Only- 

 females came to the bottles, and the males appear to be very 

 much scarcer than the females. By a careful series of 

 measurements and weighings it was deduced that one of 

 these little birds consumed in one day twice its own weight 

 of sugar. 



The paper, which is of very considerable value, is well 

 worth perusal. It was first read at the Annual Meeting of 

 the A. O. U. in New York, and has also been published in 

 the Wilson Bulletin, published at Oberlein, Ohio. 



