272



Correspondence, Notes, etc.



had, but that I had no Humming Birds, for they could not live in captivity.

Shortly afterwards the lady called on me, and her first exclamation was

“ How can you say that Humming Birds cannot live in captivity? I have

kept them for some time.” Naturall}- I plied her with questions and she

told me that when she lived in the Argentine Republic she found a nest of

unfledged Humming Birds and placed it in a trap-cage. The mother

fluttered round it in despair till she found the entrance to it, when she soon

settled on the nest and was captured with her young. They were fed on

sugar melted in water, but the lady soon found out they needed insects, and

hit upon an ingenious device for cultivating small midgt. for them. She

kept a barrel of fruit in the room, and as the fruit fermented with the heat

of the room it gave birth to numberless midges, which the birds devoured.

The young ones flourished and grew till they could not be distinguished

from the parent bird, and lived happily for several months. She succeeded

in bringing them over to Milan, where they liv<~d for two months more

and were quite tame. She showed me a series of photographs of the lovely

tiny creatures perched on her finger or hovering over a flower, and told me

how she had nursed them and how fearless and tame they were. They

could not stand the motion of a carriage, and she had to walk from the ship

to the Hotel, holding them in the hollow of her hand.


I hope to get many more interesting particulars from this lady, when

I go to see her in Milan, for her visit to me was very hurried, as she only

remained a few hours in Florence, and we had to exchange experiences

about other birds; but I am sure even these few lines on these fragile

creatures will be of interest to aviculturists.


I have read in an old book that Budgerigars were very delicate birds,

that it was almost impossible to bring them to Europe alive, as they could

neither stand the journey nor the climate. Nowadays Budgerigars are

among the hardiest of birds. Who knows but that in a few years time

Humming Birds may be not only brought over, but bred and reared in

Europe ? GlUElE Tommasi BaedeEEI.


4, Via Silvio Pellico, Florence.



DIAMOND FINCHES.


Sir, —It may interest you to hear that I have at present (May 9th) in

my small garden-aviary a pair of Diamond Finches (Steganopleura guttata)

that have been sitting on seven eggs from the 6th of this month. The nest

is built in a small borax soap box hung rather high inside the wooden shed,

and underneath a window the glass of which I had painted green and then

dabbed over with a plug of dry cloth) this subdues the suns rays and gives a

cooling opaque appearance which I like to think the birds take for growing

foliage). The nest itself is composed of fine larch twigs, wisps of green grass

which they preferred to hay that was given, the inside is lined entirely with



