HUMMING-BIRDS. 49 
that I was doing this work in the interest of science 
kept me to my purpose. 
The little crested sprite bears confinement less easily 
than the others, and rarely survives two or three days. 
Every morning I would introduce a bough of fragrant 
lime-blossoms, at which they would all dash instantly, 
diving into the flowers with great eagerness. Sugar 
dissolved in water, and diluted honey, was their favor- 
ite food, and they would sip it greedily. Holding 
them by their feet, I would place their beaks in a 
bottle of syrup, when they would rapidly eject their 
tongues and withdraw them, repeating this operation 
until satisfied. The long slender tube, at that time, 
looks like the tongue of a serpent, it is so deeply cleft, 
or bifurcated. They never displayed fear, but would 
readily alight on my finger and glance fearlessly up 
at me, watching an opportunity, however, for escape. 
In some of the islands, Martinique especially, the 
boys shoot the small birds with pellets of clay or hard, 
round seeds, through hollow canes lined with zinc or 
glass. They kill a great many in this way. 
The week before leaving America for the West 
Indies I was the guest of a friend, who one day came 
in with an odd-looking cane in his hand, and said: 
“This is a gun] am going to give you to use in the 
West Indies. It is for shooting humming-birds. And 
you will value it all the more highly when I tell you 
that it once belonged to Dr. Bryant, who used it in his 
numerous excursions in the Bahamas.” Dr. Bryant, 
a naturalist of note, and donor to the Boston Society 
of Natural History of the unsurpassed La Fresnaye 
collection of birds, spent many years in the West 
Indies previous to his death, and contributed much 
4 
