122 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIEDS. 



tremely emaciated. Others, on the contrary, which were 

 supplied twice a day with fresh flowers from the woods or 

 garden, placed in a room with windows merely closed with 

 moschetto gauze-netting, through which minute insects were 

 able to enter, lived twelve months, at the expiration of 

 which time their liberty was granted them, the person who 

 kept them having had a long journey to perform. The 

 room was kept artificially warmed during the winter months, 

 and these in Lower Louisiana are seldom so cold as to pro- 

 duce ice. On examining an orange-tree which had been 

 placed in the room where these humming birds were kept, 

 no appearance of a nest was to be seen, although the birds 

 had frequently been observed caressing each other. Some 

 have been occasionally kept confined in our Middle Dis- 

 tricts, but I have not ascertained that any one survived a 

 winter." 



Here are some curious facts concerning the most remarka- 

 ble variety of the species the Buffed Humming Bird. They 

 are from Nuttall's and Townsend's notes 



" We began," says the first of these enterprising travellers, 

 " to meet with this species near the Blue Mountains of the 

 Columbia Kiver, in the autumn as we proceeded to the west. 

 These were all young birds, and were not very easily distin- 

 guished from those of the common species of the same age. 

 We now for the first time (April 16) saw the males in num- 

 bers, darting, buzzing, and squeaking in "the usual manner 

 of their tribe ; but when engaged in collecting its accustomed 

 sweets in all the energy of life, it seemed like a breathing 

 gem, or magic carbuncle of glowing fire, stretching out 

 its gorgeous ruff, as if to emulate the sun itself in splendor. 

 Towards the close of May the females were sitting, at which 

 time the males were uncommonly quarrelsome and vigilant, 

 darting out at me as I approached the tree probably near the 

 nest, looking like an angry coal of brilliant fire, passing 

 within very little of my face, returning several times to the 

 attack, sinking and darting with the utmost velocity, at the 



