296 Hmo I hrniifjhf Home a Humminfj Bird. 
How I Brought Home a Humming Bird. 
By Chas. Hareis. 
Mr. Chas. Harris of De Von & Co., Ltd., has recently 
rolurnecl from the West Indies and among other rarities has success- 
fully landed a Humming Bird, "in response to my enquiry he has 
kindly sent me the following notes. Ed. 
I procured this little mite in the West Indies from a 
Negro boy, who took it from the nest; I did not think it was 
possible to keep it alive, but I decided to try. I purchased 
some honey, and commenced feeding it with a straw; it was the 
smallest feathered mite lever saw in my life. I got an Indian 
girl to make a basket cage for it, which was about the size 
of a Goose egg. It became quite happy in its new home, and 
after three or four weeks commenced to feed itself and grow 
a beautiful plumage of bright green, with a golden head and 
light breast. As it got older I thickened the honey, and it 
fed from a silver thimble, belonging to Mrs. Harris, which I 
tied to the perch to act as a food pot, It had learned to 
fly by the time we left Barbadoes, so I constructed a thin 
perch across my berth, where he spent his time, either sitting 
or flying about. It got to know my voice so well that when 
I entered my berth and spoke to my wife, it would call out 
incessantly until I fed it with honey, and it would lick the 
straw of honey with its long tongue, which was half the length 
of its body, until it was pacified. After we were seven or eight 
days at sea and had left the Tropics behind, it began to feel the 
cold very much, and Iliad to keep my electric light burn- 
ing and the door closed all day. In the bay of Biscay we 
had very bad weather, cold, with very high seas running, he 
WHS confiiKMl to his little hnsket cage for warmth. When 
vvc reached the English Channel, the weather got so cold that 
my wif(- had to case his little house in flannel, nevertheless 
he still kcj)! up and braved the rough passage as well as any 
passenger on board. We arrived in Southampton in the early 
mor.iing of October 3rd. Our little treasure was then numb 
with cold, but, when we started off with the London Iioat-train 
I was pleased to see the sun shining, so my little bird sat 
