GOBLETS OF THE HUMMING-BIRDS 119 
leaves of palm-trees that bend down from high in 
the air, at the end of long, bending stalks that 
spring from the the top of the small slender stem. 
They are of such a soft, lovely green that it makes 
you cool even to look up at them, and so graceful 
ana delicate that you think of -the fairies, but ‘so 
big and strong that a giant might lie upon them 
and go to sleep, without breaking them or crushing 
them down. And there are wonderful cactuses— 
so large that they are called trees—with trunks like 
great, prickly, green caterpillars, and branches like 
smaller, prickly, green caterpillars stuck on to them 
by the tail. But on these ugly branches there are 
flowers like beautiful purple stars, whilst in the pools 
or the rivers, water-lilies are floating that look like 
large, purple flakes of snow. It is amongst flowers 
and leaves and trees like these that the Humming- 
birds fly about. Those are the wonderful goblets 
out of which they sip their nectar. 
But now, about this sipping of nectar I have 
something to tell you, and when I have told it you, 
you will know more than a good many people do, 
who think they know something about Humming- 
birds and natural history. Well, it is this: the 
Humming-birds do not live o/y on the nectar in 
the flowers, as most people think they do, but on 
the insects that have been drowned in it, and which 
