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MY HUMMING BIEDS. 



Humming Birds, north of Texas— the Ruby-throated, the Man- 

 grove, the Amna, and the Ruffled. To this enumeration I venture 

 to add a fifth, the Common, or Green Humming Bird, and it is 

 not a little singular that this species, which of all the rest is most 

 universally diffused, should yet have not been named before. Of 

 the three last named above, the first belongs to Florida, the other 

 two to the Pacific coast. 



That Humming Birds consume a great quantity of insect food, 

 we are assured on the authority of all who have watched their 

 movements and habits. Mr. Gross, who relates many interesting 

 experiments which he made, in reference to the possibility of keep- 

 ing them in confinement, thinks that by each of those which he 

 had in a room, and which he also fed on syrup, there were taken 

 at a low estimate three insects per minute, and that with few 

 intervals, incessantly from dawn to dusk. He does not suppose 

 that the bird in a state of freedom takes so many in the air, 

 inasmuch as the blossoms afford it an ample supply, at the same 

 time they are perpetually seen haivking in the air. 



The above calculation, granting to the bird a minute's rest after 

 each pursuit, would give ninety flies per hour, or five hundred 

 and forty in six hours; and this would bear out the assertion of 

 a distinguished ornithologist, that Humming Birds "eat their own 

 weight of insects daily. 



