466 Mr. N. A. Vicors on the Natural Affinities 
that it is impossible to speak of them with that certainty which 
may attend our observations on groups that are better defined. 
The genus Promerops, Briss., appears to be that form of the pre- 
sent tribe which approaches nearest to the adjoining tribe of Fis- 
sirostres. Retaining the slender bill of the Tenuirostres, it exhibits 
somewhat of the broad base of the bill of the Fisszrostres, and at 
the same time their gressorial feet. By means of Merops, the 
curved bill of which approaches the structure of its own, it ap- 
pears to be immediately connected with that group. Of the limits 
of this family, which may receive its appellation from M. Brisson’s 
above-mentioned genus, I can say nothing at present; nor do I 
wish to enter into more than a general reference to the succeeding 
family of Meliphagide. That extraordinary group, the existence 
of the much more considerable portion of which was unknown to 
the Swedish naturalist, and for which there was consequently no 
place in his system, occupies a prominent and important situation 
in the ornithological department of Nature. Chiefly confined to 
Australasia, where they abound in every variety of form, and in an 
apparently inexhaustible multitude of species, they find a suffi- 
cient and never-failing support in the luxuriant vegetation of that 
country. There the fields are never without blossom, and some 
different species of plants, particularly the species of Eucalyptus, 
afford a constant succession of that food which is suited to the tu- 
bular and brush-like structure of the tongue in these birds. Their 
numbers and variety seem in consequence to be almost unlimited. 
Like the Marsupial Animals of the same country, a group to all ap- 
pearance equally anomalous, which contains within its own circle 
representatives of all the other groups of the Mammalia, this di- 
vision of birds comprises every form which is observable among 
the families of the Insessores. From the powerfully constructed 
and strong-billed Corvide and Orioli, down to the slender Merops 
and the delicately shaped Cinnyris, every Insessorial group has 
its 
