70 
POPULAR HISTORY OP BIRDS. 
" Half bird, half fly, the fairy Mug of flowers 
Reigns there, and revels through the fragrant hours, 
Gem, full of life and joy*." 
Sir Woodbine Parish, the great authority on the pro- 
vinces of the Rio de la Plata.^ and long the British Resi- 
dent^ notices in his book^ that in the gardens around Bue- 
nos Ayres huraming-birds abound. They frequent the sweet 
flowers and orange-trees growing there. He says : "We 
had a vast number of them always in ours. One with 
a brilliant violet-coloured breast was the most common. 
Many were the attempts we made to rear the young birds^ 
but in vain ; I believe, because we did not know their proper 
food. All we could do was to keep them in their own nests 
in cages for some weeks hung up in the trees in which they 
were taken, where the parent bird would continue to visit 
and to feed them, till they were supposed to be old enough 
to provide for themselves ; then, nature^s duty done, she in- 
variably abandoned them, and they as surely diedf/^ 
Sir Woodbine Parish gives an instance of the possibihty 
of taming a humming-bird, additional to one related by 
Azara. He tells us that the lady of General Balcarce, one 
* Rogers's Voyage of Columbus, p. 255. 
f ' Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata,' p. 109. 
