My Humming Birds and how I obtained them. 107


return to the Quits, a strange thing regarding them was that,

although the message mentioned two birds, only one was in the

cage as it was hauled up from the small boat that conveyed it on

board the liner. I thought that one must have in some most

unaccountable manner effected its escape,—but early the next morn¬

ing, while the ship was steaming along the coast of the islands, on

her way to the next port, the smoking-room steward caught another

Quit as it flew into his bar and brought it to me. These two made

up the pair, and thrive with me to this very day : but whether

they were the two original ones, and the lost one, by calling to its

mate, effectually enticed it over from the land while we were at

anchor, or whether the second was a straggler of the wandering

type, is a problem that can never be solved, though for reasons of

romance I choose to cling to the former belief. And before I leave

the subject of my Quits, I must state they are a new importation,

quite unlike the common species (Certhiola flaveola), and belong to

a local variety known as Certhiola dominicana ,—a trifle larger than

the former, much darker on the head, and a more vivid orange on

the chest, in the case of the male. They utter a shrill, hissing,

drawn-in kind of cry, similar to the sound produced by locusts, and

to my mind equally suggestive of sultry summer days of sun-baked

lands.


The morning following the happy advent of our first batch of

Humming Birds saw us entering the palm-studded harbour of Pointe-

a-Pitre, the capital of Guadeloupe. There, owing to the epidemic of

small-pox I have mentioned, we were quarantined, and only stayed

a few hours. But a second lot of Hummers came on board. Most

of these had been caught some few days and fed according to the

recipe given. Many had become soiled with the syrup and con¬

sequently looked seedy; for a hummer, as everyone knows (or

should know), depends more than any other bird on its wings.

The physical misery and discomfort caused by inability to fly, even

momentarily, means for this swift, impatient, gnat-like creature of

the air, complete immobility and often death through fretting.

However, the new arrivals were quickly cleaned, distributed

amongst the various cages, and we found we had in all a little

over twenty birds belonging to three species, thus making up the



