120 LITTLE FOLKS 
LIVING SUNBEAMS. 
That's a good name for them, too, for surely nothing was ever 
created with the brilliant and flashing colors of these little beauties. 
Humming Birds men call them, and Murmurers they are called in 
some places. There are more than three hundred kinds of them 
already known, and new kinds are all the time being found, and 
they are exclusively American, being never found anywhere else, 
except in the Islands near the American coast. 
Of course — if you've ever seen one of these beautiful birds — 
you know they are called hummers, because of the humming noise 
they make when poised over a* flower. The different varieties 
make different sounds, so that one who has studied them, knows at 
once from the sound, which kind he hears. The humming is made 
by the rapid beating of the wings, for wonderful and beautiful as 
they are, these " Living Sunbeams " have no voice. Does that 
seem too bad ? I think not. It would hardly be fair to lavish 
everything on one family — great beauty and sweet singing — would 
it ? You will find on studying birds, that the sweet singers are 
nearly all of them clad in sober robes, and the great beauties can't 
sing a note. 
Humming Birds are made to fly. Even when eating they 
seldom alight, and their legs are very weak and delicate, while the 
wings are strong, which of itself, .shows what they are made for. 
They eat the honey from flowers, as has always teen known ; 
but it has been discovered of late that they .are not satisfied with 
this delightful diet, but vary it now and then with a tender spider, 
or a dainty ant. They dart about so quickly that they have only 
to select what they will eat, for no spider or anything else can get 
out of their way. A little spider may sit in the middle of the web 
waiting for some unwary fly to come along, and in the very next 
second, before he knows what's the matter, he may be a prisoner 
in the stomach of a humming bird, his web left all stretched, with 
even the dew on it undisturbed. 
Mr. Webber, a naturalist who studied these little creatures* 
with great interest, and who caught and tamed a good many of 
