HOME OF THE HUMMING BIRDS. 115 



food is insectivorous, though they doubtless do in- 

 dulge in honey and sweets from the flowers. This 

 observer also surrounded a humming bird's nest with 

 gauze, just before the young were ready to fly, and 

 for three weeks the mother bird came and fed them, 

 betraying the utmost solicitude if any one approached, 

 and driving oif other birds, with angry chirps and 

 violent actions. 



/ Eight Species of humming bird have been found 

 "in xobago : the " Doctor " or the sicklebill, which has 

 a curved beak, and builds a pensile nest, beneath a 

 bending leaf, I have already described ; the saber- 

 wing, a very peculiar species ; the whitethroat, one of 

 the little dancers of the forest ; the ruby-crested, the 

 most brilliant of them all, and which has been nearly 

 exterminated by the bird-hunters ; the emerald, which 

 is very small ; and three others not so numerous. As 

 a bird peculiar to the New World, and never found 

 in any other part of the globe, the humming bird pos- 

 sesses a special value to Americans, taking the place 

 in this hemisphere that the sunbirds fill in the other.* 



* I would call attention to the fact, in this connection, that 

 while six species of humming bird have been found in Tobago, 

 thp^liave been discovered in Juan Fernandez, one of which has 

 been named the Trochilus Fernandensis. 



