102 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIKDS- 



of this class come across a most charmingly told account 

 of the entire domestication of a family of humming birds, 

 by a gentleman of New England, who managed to keep 

 them for two years in his large conservatory. 



He had, by the merest accident, discovered the nest in a 

 very large and heavy woodbine honeysuckle, which hung 

 over the window of his sitting-room, and the idea at once 

 occurred to him of gradually enticing the old birds into the 

 room, which opened into the conservatory, and then trans 

 ferring thither the nest with the young. The plan, after a 

 great deal of patient dexterity, succeeded, and this lovely 

 little family became his inmates and friends along with the 

 flowers. The relation of this gentleman was sufficiently 

 pleasing to enchant me but there was not enough of the 

 naturalist in it to satisfy me. We had great honeysuckles 

 too ; why did they not build there as well ? Hundreds of 

 times I had searched their intricacies with patient zeal, twig 

 by twig, tendril by tendril ; and this for years yet there 

 were hundreds around me all day ! There was something 

 in this I did not understand. 



At last, in the work of a French Naturalist of note, M. 

 Valliant, I found the hint, that many of the smaller tropical 

 birds, among them the Hummers, invariably built their nests, 

 where the locality of feeding grounds rendered it possible 

 for them to make such a selection, upon the pensile limbs of 

 those trees that hung far over running water, as their most 

 dreaded enemies, the monkeys and snakes, were both very 

 cautious of venturing out upon such insecure foothold to rob. 

 This hint I accordingly treasured, and literally haunted the 

 brooks, the creek and river sides in the spring months, 

 watching with the ceaseless hope of catching one of the birds 

 in the act of alighting on the nest, which I knew was my 

 only chance. Still I found no success for years ; but, I had 

 gained one piece of information, namely ; that at eleven 

 o'clock, A. M., and five, P. M., if I stood still for a short 

 time, I would see them go darting past, directly over the 



