and made some movements within. At my distance I could not be positive,
but I could guess--and I did, and subsequent events confirmed me--that
birdlings were out. Like other bird mammas, she sat on those infants as
steadily as she had sat on the eggs, and it was a day or two later
before I saw her feed. This was the murderous-looking fashion in which
that dainty sprite administered nourishment to her babies: she clung to
the edge of the nest, and appeared to address herself to the task of
charging an old-fashioned muzzle-loading gun, using her beak for a
ramrod, and sending it well home, violently enough, one would suppose,
to disintegrate the nestling on whom she operated. If I had not read Mr.
Torrey's description of hummingbird feeding, I should have thought the
green-clad dame was destroying her offspring, instead of tenderly
ministering to their wants.

[Sidenote: _A MURDEROUS-LOOKING OPERATION._]

Bird babies grow apace. Appetites waxed stronger, and the trumpet-vine
had dropped its blossoms. The little mother had to seek new fields, and
she settled on a patch of jewel-weed for her supplies. Now, if ever, was
needed the help of her mate, but not once did he show himself. Was he
loitering--as the books hint--at a distance, and did she go to him now
and then, on her many journeys, to tell him how the young folk
progressed? I cannot tell; I was busy watching the business partner; I
had no time to hunt up absentees. But I have a "theory," which may or
may not explain his apparent indifference. It is that the small dame,
so intolerant of neighbors even on her feeding-ground, simply cannot
endure any one about her, and prefers to do all her building and
bringing-up herself, with no one to "bother." Have we not seen her
prototype in the human world?

The young hummers had been out of their shells for two weeks before I
saw them, and then the sight was unsatisfactory,--only the flutter of a
tiny wing, and two sharp beaks thrust up above the edge. But after this
day beaks were nearly always to be seen, and sometimes a small round
head, or a glistening white tongue, or the point of a wing appeared to
encourage me. Baby days were now fast passing away; the mother fed
industriously, and the "pair of twins," waxed strong and pert, sat up
higher in the nest, and began the unceasing wag of the head from side to
side, like their mother. What a fairy-like world was this they were now
getting acquainted with! What to them was t