HUMMING-BIRD. 37 



feeding them with water sweetened with honey or 

 sugar. When I put a cup of their food in the 

 cage they would alight on my fingers, and with 

 their long flexible tongue suck off the honey I had 

 accidentally spilled. In disposition they are too 

 pugnacious to live as harmoniously as one would 

 expect or desire, sometimes pursuing one another 

 around the cage with great ferocity, and such in- 

 conceivable rapidity that their tiny forms seemed 

 resolved into absolute sound. I frequently per- 

 mitted them to fly about the room for exercise, 

 but they never returned voluntarily to their cage. 

 When caught they did not resist and struggle, 

 but saw the door of their prison-house closed upon 

 them without a complaint. They had never a sick 

 or unhappy day through the whole summer, but 

 when the cold days of autumn approached they 

 began to droop, although their cage was hung in 

 the warmest place in the room. For three days 

 they hung suspended to their perches by their 

 feet, and did not relax the hold while life lasted. 

 I have found them clinging to vines and shrub- 

 bery in that manner on cold mornings after a 

 frost, but though seemingly lifeless the warmth of 

 the hand would revive them. 



" Some years a few are unaccountably tardy 

 about migrating; at other times they make the 

 mistake of coming too early in spring. Undoubt- 

 edly most of them migrate in August, but with 

 them, as in every other community, there are al- 



