122 A WIDOW AND TWINS. 
liam Brewster,! would be continued after 
the nestlings were fully grown. On the 
14th I wrote in my journal: “The method 
of feeding remains unchanged, and, as it 
seems, is likely to remain so to the end. It 
must save the mother much labor in going 
and coming, and perhaps renders the codper- 
ation of the male parent unnecessary.”’ ‘This 
prediction was fulfilled, but with a qualifica- 
tion to be hereafter specified. 
Every morning, now, I went to the apple- 
tree uncertain whether the nest would not 
be found empty. According to Audubon, 
Nuttall, Mr. Burroughs, and Mrs. Treat, 
young humming-birds stay in the nest only 
seven days. Mr. Brewster, in his notes 
already cited, says that the birds on which 
his observations were made —in the garden 
of Mr. E. S. Hoar, in Concord — were 
hatched on the 4th of July,? and forsook 
the nest on the 18th. My birds were al- 
1 The Auk, vol. vii. p. 206. 
2 But Mr. Hoar, from whom Mr. Brewster had his 
dates, informs me that the time of hatching was not 
certainly known; and from Mr. Brewster’s statement 
about the size of the nestlings, I cannot doubt that they 
had been out of the shell some days longer than Mr. 
Hoar then supposed. 
