THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 143 
with sugar and water, and gladly returned 
to a diet of spiders and other such spicy and 
hearty comestibles. 
Mr. Henshaw, with an evident satisfac- 
tion which does him honor, remarks upon 
the foregoing story as proving that, what- 
ever may be true of male hummers in gen- 
eral, there are at least some faithful Bene- 
dicts among them. For myself, indeed, as 
I have already said, I hold no brief against 
the ruby-throat, and, notwithstanding the 
seemingly unfavorable result of my investi- 
gation into his habits as a husband and fa- 
ther, it is by no means clear to me that we 
must call him hard names. Before doing 
that, we ought to know not only that he 
stays away from his wife and children, but 
why he stays away; whether he is really a 
shirk, or absents himself unselfishly and for 
their better protection, at the risk of being 
misunderstood and traduced. My object in 
this paper is to raise that question about 
him, rather than to blacken his character; 
in a word, to call attention to him, not as a 
reprobate, but asa mystery. To that end 
I return to the story of my own observa- 
tions. 
