At last I turned lingeringly from all this beauty to the nest. Ah! something had happened there too! Madam sat on the edge, leaned over, 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?