516 Mr. G. E, Lodge on some 



Afterwards I made a careful sketch of the nest and eggs 

 " in situ." While so engaged the ben bird came and hovered 

 once anxiously within a few inches of my head. Another 

 hen bird also came to look on, and the two chased each other 

 about for a time. I saw nothing of the cock bird. A few 

 days afterwards, while riding in the same direction, we 

 expressed a Avish to visit the nest again to see whether the eggs 

 Avere hatched, but were told that it had been destroyed. 

 The negroes take every Hummiug-bird^s nest they can find 

 and sell them to visitors coming past the island on the 

 steamers; but this wholesale destruction by the residents 

 appears to be passed over unnoticed, although it is quite a 

 diti'erent case when an occasional visitor comes to kill a few 

 l)irds in the cause of science. While here I saw a wretched 

 darkie boy swaggering about with a muzzle-loading gun, who 

 asked me whether I wanted any Humming-birds. I told 

 him "No,"' and had half a mind to lay an information 

 against him. 



The Humming-birds' nests we had brought to us appeared 

 to be of three different sorts, and the boy who brought them 

 prof cssed to be very positive as to their identity. He told us 

 that the smallest one on horizontal twigs belonged to the 

 Ruby-crest, the rather larger ones on more upright twigs to 

 thcEmeraldj and the large, untidy, pouch-shaped ones hanging 

 to the end of a shred of banana-leaf to tlie Doctor Humming- 

 bird, which is the name they give here to the Glaucis hirsuta. 

 Most of the nests of the two first-mentioned kinds are placed 

 on small bamboo-twigs and are very beautiful. The smallest 

 of them measures only Ij inch in diameter, by f of an 

 inch in depth, outside measurements. It is placed on a 

 horizontal bamboo-twig, at one of the joints where two other 

 twigs sprout out at one side, helping to siipport it. It is not 

 easy to tell what it is made of, but it appears to be chiefly 

 composed of seed-husks of grass, neatly clotted together into a 

 compact mass by cobwebs, which also bind firmly round the 

 main stem and the side twigs, while the outside is studded 

 with little chips of very fine, scaly, bark-like material. This 

 nest contained one egg, very large in proportion to the size 



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