50 Mr. D. G. Elliot on the Trochilidse. 



in the order given. Latham describes, in his ' General Syn- 

 opsis ' (/. c), a Humming-bird, which he states he received 

 from Tobago, as follows : — " Length four inches. Bill three 

 quarters ; colour dusky ; the under mandible yellow, except 

 at the tip : head, neck, back as far as the middle, and beneath 

 as far as the belly, glossy green : lower part of the back, 

 rump, and wing-coverts green, glossed with copper : across 

 the lower part of the belly a white bar : thighs white : vent 

 and under tail-coverts very pale brown : quills and tail blue- 

 black, the last somewhat forked : legs black."'' This answers 

 excellently for the present species, the chief discrepancy being 

 the colour of the under tail-coverts, which in the adult are 

 white, streaked with brown. The locality given is also cor- 

 rect, being one of those in which the T. linnm, Gould, is 

 found. To this bird of Latham, Gmelin, in his ' Systema 

 Naturae,' gave the name of tobaci, changed afterwards by La- 

 tham, in his ' Index Ornithologicus,' to tobagensis. In 1829, 

 Lesson (/. c.) described and figured the species as Ormsnnja 

 viridissima. Mr. Gould, in his monograph (/. c), calls the 

 bird T. linnm, after the name, as he states, proposed for it 

 by Bonaparte in the ' Revue et Magasin de Zoologie," 1854, 

 p. 255. In the article thus referred to (the " Conspectus 

 Trochilorum ") , under the genus Thaumantias , Bonaparte 

 refers his linncei (no. 245) to Trochilus thaumantias, Linn. 

 Now the T. thaumantias of Linnaeus is not a Thaumatias at 

 all, but the Polytmus virescens, auct. (Linneeus's name having 

 been made into a genus, his species required a new one) . Of 

 this term the linnm of Bonaparte would be a synonym ; and 

 therefore M. Bourcier, who is responsible for the synonymy of 

 T. tobaci in Mr. Gould's work, was clearly in error in applying 

 Bonaparte^s name to it. If Gmelin^s appellation did not have 

 the priority, viridissima of Lesson would be the rightful one 

 for the species, Bourcier^s objection, advanced by Mr. Gould, 

 that the same specific name may not be applied to two birds 

 belonging to the same family, even if of different genera, being 

 untenable. 



T. tobaci is a species of rather extensive range, as it has 

 been obtained in Tobago, Trinidad, Guiana, Venezuela, North- 

 ern Birazil, and, as stated by Mr. Gould, in the vicinity of 



