184 
OUR HOME BIRDS. 
their cage to the ceiling at night to preserve them 
from the rats, and in the morning the birds were 
all devoured.” 
“ Why didn’t they have cats there ?” asked Clara, 
indignant at the sad fate of the humming-bird family. 
“ I am afraid that would not have mended matters 
much,” replied her governess, “ as cats are proverb- 
ially fond of birds in the way that the cannibal loves 
his fellow-men. To keep humming-birds for any 
length of time seems utterly impossible ; and one who 
knows says : ‘ There is no possibility of taming birds 
so tender ; no food could be had, by human industry, 
sufficiently delicate to supply the place of the nectar 
which they gather in their wild state. Some have 
been kept alive for a few weeks by syrups ; but this 
nourishment, fine as it seems, must be gross when 
compared with what is commonly gathered by these 
little flutterers among the flowers.’ 
“ Audubon tells us that they have a particular 
liking for such flowers as are shaped like a tube. 
The common jimson-weed, or thorn-apple, and the 
trumpet-flower, are most favored by their attentions, 
and after these the honeysuckle, the garden balsam, 
and the wild species that grows on the borders of 
ponds, rivulets, and deep ravines ; but every flower, 
down to the wild violet, affords them a certain 
amount of nourishment. Their food consists prin- 
