56 



MY HUMMING BIRDS. 



along with other poetical dreams, found the fact a more practical 

 and wiser thing. 



Years passed away, leaving me still unwearied, though my 

 continued want of success might have made me what the world 

 calls wiser. In the meantime I had, in poring over the time- 

 stained volumes of the famoii3 old "Port-folio" — certainly the 

 first, if not the ablest of American periodicals of the class — < 

 come acToss a most charmingly told account of the entire do- 

 mestication of a family of Humming Birds, by a gentleman of 

 JSew England, who managed to keep them for two years in his 

 large conservatory. He had, by the merest accident, discovered 

 the nest in a very large and heavy woodbine honeysuckle, which 

 hung over the window of his sitting-room, and the idea at once 

 occurred to him of gradually enticing the old birds into the room, 

 which opened into the conservatory, and then transferring thither 

 the nest with the young. The plan, after a great deal of patient 

 dexterity, succeeded, and this lovely little family became his 

 inmates and friends along with the flowers. The relation of this 

 gentleman was sufficiently pleasing to enchant me — but there was 

 not enough of the naturalist in it to satisfy me. "We had great 

 honey-suckles too; why did they not build there as well? Hun- 

 dreds of times I had searched their intricacies with patient zeal, 

 twig by twig, tendril by tendril; and this for years — yet there 

 were hundreds around me all clay! There was something in this 

 I did not understand. 



At last, in the work of a French Naturalist of note, M. Yaillant, 

 I found the hint, that many of the smaller tropical birds, among 

 them the Hummers, invariably built their nests, where the locality 

 of feeding-grounds rendered it possible for them to make such a 

 selection, upon the pensile limbs of those trees that hung far over 

 running water, as their most dreaded enemies, the monkeys and 

 snakes, were both very cautious of venturing out upon such inse- 

 cure foothold to rob. This hint I accordingly treasured, and 

 ' literally haunted the brooks, the creek and river sides in the 

 spring months, watching with the ceaseless hope of catching one 

 of the birds in the act of alighting on its nest, which I knew 

 was my only chance. Still, I found no success for years; but I 

 had gained one piece of information, namely, that at eleven 

 o'clock a.m., and five p.m., if I stood still for a short time, I 

 would see them go darting past directly over the middle of the 

 channel. This might lead to something or it might not, it was 

 worth remembering at least. 

 a Now came the whirl of the youth's first ambitious struggles 



for excellence and success among his fellows. Bird-nesting gave 

 way to Euclid, and idle strollings through the scented woods to 



