134 Practical Bird-Keeping, 



which had grabbed its head, and about a quarter of an hour later 

 was hovering in its glass-sided case, apparently trying to peep 

 into the lens of a camera which was being operated in front! 

 Surely so robust a minikin ought to have lived longer than it 

 did ; the taiueness it showed was characteristic of the group, 

 which excel in this lovable and desirable peculiarity. 



Provided they can be kept warm and dean (a most im- 

 portant point), the chief difficulty with these birds is evidently 

 the provision of suitable food ; but as this has been got over with 

 the Sunbirds (^Neciatiiiiid(E), which belong to an entirely different 

 group, being true Passerines, we need not despair of seeing 

 Humming-birds also more commonly and successfully kept 

 sooner or later. It is true that Sunbirds hop about in the normal 

 way, and are not quite so sensitive to cold, apparentl}', but that 

 they were not easy to begin with the following experiences of 

 mine may show. 



In 1897, I started from Calcutta with twelve Amethyst- 

 rumped Sunbirds (^Arachnechthra zeylonica), a selected lot — for to 

 avoid useless waste of life I had liberated at least as many, which 

 did not look like doing well — and one Purple {A. asiaticd), the 

 only one I could get, and in moult at that. Although I arrived 

 home about midsummer, all the Amethysts died eii roicte — the 

 last in the train going up to London — evidently from cold; the 

 one Purple reached the Zoo, and lived there about a fortnight 

 only, though treated with every care by that excellent former 

 keeper of the Insect-House, Quantrill. 



So far as I know, these were the first Sunbirds to reach 

 England, or Europe for that matter; and had I argued as some 

 people do about Humming-birds, I should have said that Sun- 

 birds were not worth trying with again. 



The subsequent experiences of others, especially of Mr. A. 

 Ezra, have shown, however, that even the delicate Amethyst can 

 be shown and moulted successfully ; while the Purple, which has 

 confirmed my scanty experience by proving much the hardier, 

 can not only be so treated, but has been kept by a dealer (Mr. 

 J. D. Hamlyn) in numbers in a store-cage in a sitting-room for 

 nearly a year — a good record for a soft bill of any sort. 



So that, as on the evidence Prevost's Hummer should be 



