HUMMING-BIRD. oe 
feeding them with water sweetened with honey or 
sugar. When I put a cup of their food in the 
cage they would alight on my fingers, and with 
their long flexible tongue suck off the honey I had 
accidentally spilled. In disposition they are too 
pugnacious to live as harmoniously as one would 
expect or desire, sometimes pursuing one another 
around the cage with great ferocity, and such in- 
conceivable rapidity that their tiny forms seemed 
resolved into absolute sound. I frequently per- 
mitted them to fly about the room for exercise, 
but they never returned voluntarily to their cage. 
When caught they did not resist and struggle, 
but saw the door of their prison-house closed upon 
them without a complaint. They had never a sick 
or unhappy day through the whole summer, but 
when the cold days of autumn approached they 
began to droop, although their cage was hung in 
the warmest place in the room. For three days 
they hung suspended to their perches by their 
feet, and did not relax the held while life lasted. 
I have found them clinging to vines and shrub- 
bery in that manner on cold mornings after a 
frost, but though seemingly lifeless the warmth of 
the hand would revive them. 
“Some years a few are unaccountably tardy 
about migrating; at other times they make the 
mistake of coming too early in spring. Undoubt- 
edly most of them migrate in August, but with 
them, as in every other community, there are al- 
