BIRDS OF THE BAHAMA ISLANDS. 
109 
The Bahama Islands are the home of this beautiful little Hum- 
ming-bird. It is very abundant in the neighborhood of Nassau, 
where I procured a fine series of specimens. Dr. Bryant gives an 
interesting account of this species. He says, “ All the specimens I 
procured, seven in number, were killed in February and the early 
part of March. At that time its food consisted almost entirely of 
a small green apkis, found abundantly in the West India vervain 
( V. stachytarpheta), a small blue flower that grows in all the dry 
pastures. Gosse calls the Least Humming-bird of Jamaica the 
Vervain Humming-bird from its hovering round the plant, but the 
name would apply as well to the present species. I saw nothing in 
its habits differing from those of the common ruby-throated species, 
with the exception that it was more quarrelsome in its disposition, 
chasing the Fighter, as the Tyrannies caudifasciatus is called, when- 
ever it came near him, and that its note is louder and shriller than 
that of our species, and much more frequently uttered. 
“ Incubation commences by the 1st of March. I saw three nests 
of this bird. One found on the 3d of March contained two eggs, 
partly hatched; a second, April 10, one egg; and another in May, 
two eggs. The nests w r ere all composed of the same materials, 
principally the cotton from the silk-cotton tree, with a few dpwny 
masses that looked as if derived from some species of asclepias. 
This was felted and matted together, and the outside stuck over 
with bits of 'lichens and little dry stalks or fibres o'f vegetable 
matter! . . . The eggs, like those of all others of the family, are but 
two in number, snow-white when blown, and slightly rosy before.” 
