466 Mr. N. A. Vigors 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 Temiirostres, it exhibits 

 somewhat of the broad base of the bill of the Fissirostres, 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 Meliphagida. 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 Insessore$. From the powerfully constructed 

 and strong-billed Corvida and Orioli, down to the slender Merops 

 and the delicately shaped Cinnyris, every Insessorial group has 



its 



