But now, about this sipping of nectar I have something to tell you, and when I have told it you, you will know more than a good many people do, who think they know something about Humming-birds and natural history. Well, it is this: the Humming-birds do not live _only_ on the nectar in the flowers, as most people think they do, but on the insects that have been drowned in it, and which they suck up at the same time. You see the insects--of course I mean little insects--flies or gnats, not large moths and butterflies--get into the tubes of the flowers, to sip the nectar themselves, and they often fall into it, and are not able to get out again, but drown there; for to them it is like a little lake or pond--a pond of nectar, and, of course, very nice, but still, for all that, it drowns them. There is hardly any flower-cup that has not these drowned insects in it, and when the Humming-birds drink the nectar, they swallow the little insects at the same time. They could not live upon nectar only--they want animal food (as it is called) as well, and that is the way in which they get it. That is why when people have caught Humming-birds, and given them only nectar--or sugar and water, which is something like it--to live on, they have always died. There are no insects in it, no animal food. They had gravy, you see, but no meat, and they wanted meat as well as gravy. So they died, the poor Humming-birds. But I think it is almost better for a living sunbeam to die than to be kept living in a cage. But now, why do the Indians call the Humming-birds living sunbeams? Oh, but you will say I have told you that, and, besides, anybody could guess. It is because they are so bright and gleaming, and hover in the air as a sunbeam dances in it, or shoot through it as quickly and as brightly as a sunbeam shoots down from the sun. Well, yes, that is one explanation; but why should there not be two (as there were about the Birds of Paradise), so that you can choose the one you like best?--for you know you are not a clever person _yet_. Well, there _are_ two, for the Indians say that the Humming-birds are called living sunbeams because they really _are_ living sunbeams, just as you are called a little girl because you are a little girl; and how could there be a simpler explanation of a thing than that?