ORDER PASSERES. 395 



their nest : sometimes they will even attack them without 

 motive, put them to flight, and even pursue them ; larger 

 birds, are thus frequently obliged to give way. 



The description given of the tongue of the souimangas, 

 will serve for the humming-birds. Naturalists are at variance 

 on the point whether the humming-birds feed on insects as 

 well as the juice of flowers. Don Felix d'Azara suspects that 

 they have other means of nourishment besides the latter ; he 

 tells us, that in the environs of the river Plata, where some 

 of them remain all the year round, and where there are neither 

 woods nor flowers during winter, he has seen them in that 

 season visit spiders' webs, and he thinks it probable that 

 they feed on those insects. He adds, in support of this sus- 

 picion, the authority of M. Fr. Isidore de Guerra, a gentle- 

 man worthy of the highest credit, who had reared many of 

 them, and who informed him that they actually do eat 

 spiders. But M. Badier, who observed these birds in Guada- 

 loupe, denies that they live at all on the juice of flowers ; he 

 assures us that they use their tongue only to catch the little 

 insects in the calix of flowers ; and that such as he attempted 

 to rear with syrup, invariably degenerated and died. He 

 adds, that on opening them he found the sugar crystallized 

 in the intestines, and that a part of their intestines had lost 

 its flexibility and become hardened and brittle. Of all those 

 persons who have studied these birds in their native country, 

 there are but two, as above-mentioned, who make them feed 

 on insects at all, and M. Badier alone excludes the juice of 

 flowers. M. Vieillot has also observed them in a living state, 

 and he grants the possibility of their drawing up very small 

 insects, which may be at the bottom of the calices of flowers, 

 and also the dust of the stamina ; but though he has killed 

 many of them immediately after eating, he was unable to find 

 any insect in the oesophagus, or in the stomach, or any 

 remains of such ; which causes him to believe that the juice of 

 flowers constitutes their food ; he also believes, in spite of 



