49 
JAN. 21 J522 
The Male Ruby-Throat. 
1891.] 
all be civilized into stirring Phi¬ 
listines, with no time to waste in friend¬ 
ly gossip; farms will be tilled by ten¬ 
ants who expect to make money as 
well as a livelihood,' and could not 
shoot a wild turkey to save their lives; 
the saw will buzz away our grand old 
forests that have sheltered the mound- 
builders ; we shall become a syndicate, 
or a corporation, or a trust; and the 
country will be so well drained that it 
cannon-even summon an old-time chill 
j»ver its changed conditions. 
Yes, the new civilization will come. 
I am enough a child of my age to feel 
that it is best it should come, but I 
am glad to be here before it comes. I 
hope that it may not come too fast! 
“ Touch us gently, Time! 
We ’ve not, proud nor soaring wings; 
Our ambition, our content, 
Lies in simple things. 
Humble voyagers are we 
O’er Life’s dim, unbounded sea, 
Seeking only some calm clime ; — 
Touch us gently, gentle Time! ” 
Octave Thanet. 
5"T,5"0 3 _ 
, |l {■ C*0 M 
THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 
“ Your fathers, where are they ? ” — Zech- 
Ariah i. 5. 
While keeping daily watch upon a 
nest of our common humming-bird, in 
the summer of 1890, 1 I was struck 
with the persistent absence of the head 
of the family. As week after week 
elapsed, this feature of the case excited 
more and more remark, and I turned 
to my out-of-door journal for such mea¬ 
gre notes as it contained of a similar 
nest found five years before. From 
these it appeared that at that time, 
also, the father bird was missing. 
Could such truancy be habitual with 
the male ruby-throat? I had never 
supposed that any of our land birds 
were given to behaving in this ill-man¬ 
nered, unnatural way, and the matter 
seemed to call for investigation. 
My first resort was, of course, to 
books. The language of Wilson and 
Audubon is somewhat ambiguous, but 
may fairly be taken as implying the 
male bird’s presence throughout the 
period of nidification. Nuttall speaks 
explicitly to the same effect, though 
with no specification of the grounds 
on which His statement is based. The 
later systematic biographers — Brewer, 
1 See Atlantic Monthly for June, 1891. 
VOL. LXVIII. - NO. 405. 4 
Samuels, Minot, and the authors of 
New England Bird Life — are silent 
in respect to the point. Mr. Bur¬ 
roughs, in Wake-Robin, mentions hav¬ 
ing found two nests, and gives us to 
understand that he saw only the fe¬ 
male birds. Mrs. Treat, on the other 
hand, makes the father a conspicuous 
figure about the single nest concern¬ 
ing which she reports. Mr. James 
Russell Lowell, too, speaks of watch¬ 
ing both parents as they fed the young 
ones: “The mother always alighted, 
while the father as uniformly remained 
upon the wing.” 
So far, then, the evidence was de¬ 
cidedly, not to say decisively, in the 
masculine ruby-throat’s favor. But 
while I had no desire to make out 
a case against him, and in fact was 
beginning to feel half ashamed of my 
uncomplimentary surmises, I was still 
greatly impressed with what my own 
eyes had seen, or rather had not seen, 
and thought it worth while to push the 
inquiry a little further. 
I wrote first to Mr. E. S. Hoar, in 
whose garden Mr. Brewster had made 
the observations cited in my previous 
article. He replied with great kind¬ 
ness, and upon the point in question 
