ts
passage from one bird to the other,--human eyesight would hardly be
equal to work of such nicety; but the two bills were put together so
frequently and in so pronounced a manner as to leave us in no practical
uncertainty about what was going on. Neither had I any doubt that the
change was connected in some way with the increasing age of the
fledgelings; yet it is to be said that the two methods continued to be
used interchangeably to the end, and on the 28th, when Number Two had
been out of the nest for seven days, the mother thrust her bill down his
throat, and repeated the operation, just as she had done three weeks
before.

[12] Mr. E. H. Eames reports (in _The Auk_, vol. vii. p. 287) that, on
dissecting a humming-bird, about two days old, he found sixteen young
spiders in its throat, and a pultaceous mass of the same in its stomach.

For at least two days longer, as I believe, the faithful creature
continued her loving ministrations, although I failed to detect her in
the act. Then, on the 1st of August, as I sat on the piazza, I saw her
for the last time. The honeysuckle vine had served her well, and still
bore half a dozen scattered blossoms, as if for her especial benefit.
She hovered before them, one by one, and in another instant was gone.
May the Fates be kind to her, and to her children after her, to the
latest generation! Our intercourse had lasted for eight weeks,--wanting
one day,--and it was fitting that it should end where it had begun, at
the sign of the honeysuckle.

The absence of the father bird for all this time, though I have
mentioned it but casually, was of course a subject of continual remark.
How was it to be explained? My own opinion is, reluctant as I have been
to reach it, that such absence or desertion--by whatever name it may be
called--is the general habit of the male ruby-throat. Upon this point I
shall have some things to say in a subsequent paper.

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.

"Your fathers, where are they?"--ZECHARIAH i. 5.

While keeping daily watch upon a nest of our common humming-bird, in the
summer of 1890, 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
meagre 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 trua