Tame Humming-Birds.
A young lady in California who had, through illness, to spend several hours a day reclining on rugs spread on the garden-lawn, succeeded in taming two humming-birds. At first the birds watched her with some curiosity from a distance. To entice them to come nearer she fastened a fuchsia, filled with sweetened water, to a branch of a tree above her head. The tiny fellows soon thrust their bills into the flower. Thinking they might like honey better, a fresh flower was filled with it every day. This food was quite to their taste, and so eager were they to get it that they would hardly wait for their mistress to leave the flower before they began to rifle its sweets. They grew so familiar at length that when she held a flower in one hand and filled it with drops from a spoon, the birds caught the drops as they fell. Only two male birds monopolised the honey flower, and they would not permit any bee or wasp to come near it. Between themselves even squabbles continually arose about possession. Change of weather compelling the young lady to keep indoors, she tried to coax them to the parlour windows. For a time the birds could not understand the altered position of affairs, but at last one of them repeatedly went up to her and took honey from her hand.