286 Messrs. Albert and Hugo Pam,


There remains no doubt in our minds at all that, apart

from the question of feeding, the most important requirements

of these birds are sunshine and fresh air, and, except under very

particularly favourable conditions, these two requirements can

very seldom be obtained together inside a London building.

The question of heat is to our mind a minor consideration,

provided that the temperature does not fall very much below 55

to 6o° at any time, but an adequate supply of bright light and

fresh air is an absolute necessity.


If during a warm summer one could liberate a number of

these birds in a large open-air aviary (naturally with a very

small mesh wire) in which a good supply of flowering plants had

been placed, we consider that there is no reason why they should

not live until the late autumn, but the great difficulty of keeping

these birds in small cages is this that, in a house such as

the Insect house, in which they were placed in the Zoological

Gardens, they must be protected against the draughts caused by

the doors being continually opened and shut, and the tempera-

ture being kept fairly high causes the air to be too ' stuffy' and

the ventilation deficient.


It will therefore be seen that it is practically impossible in

this country to obtain the ideal conditions which would permit

of Humming-Birds being seen in captivity in all their splendour

and colouration, and we have therefore decided that unless some

new scheme can be devised which would give these birds more

natural conditions in which to live, we must give up our efforts

to introduce them into this country.


It may be of some interest to the readers of this Magazine

to hear of the plans which we had worked out for bringing over

and keeping here this last consignment.


We had carefully discussed the question of the food with

Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, and had come to the conclusion that the

solution of molasses sugar, with the vegetable extract Marmite

added did not contain a sufficient quantity of albuminoids to

sustain life for any length of time. We therefore decided on the

following plan. Every other day we added to a solution of the

molasses sugar a quantity of well beaten up white of egg, and

we found that the birds readily took this food and did very well

on it.



